What I See
by Arashi Leonhart
Summary: Rin Tohsaka is presented with caring for a doomed Shiki Tohno. Post HF, post Arc True.
1. Chapter 1

What I See

Chapter 1: To Touch Tragedy

* * *

It was not the sort of request Rin Tohsaka liked to make. In fact, she sincerely hated the situation she was in, as she was almost completely certain it would fall on deaf ears. "I need more materials."

The one she addressed did not even look up from his reading material. This was not uncommon: all hours in which he was supposedly available for consultation were always ones spent doing something completely unrelated to magecraft. Rin had the suspicion he crafted the notoriety deliberately. If he were working on a given topic, any number of factions within the Clock Tower might send a student in just to glimpse what exactly he might be working on. If not that, then his admirers might interest themselves in something as well.

So instead of something related to work, Waver Velvet sat at his desk reading a strategy guide to _Valkyria Chronicles_.

"No," he said.

"I've hit a wall on the replication process," Rin continued, as if she had not heard him. "If I'm going to make the deadline, I need more resources than I can actually generate myself."

Waver thumbed through to the next page.

"If I don't get the prototype in working order, crazy Wizard Marshall at my side or not, somebody is going to start crying foul. I promised them I'd get at least a demonstration in."

Again, the crinkle of paper being flipped over was the only response. Rin thought that the lecturer was no longer reading so much as using the book as a convenient excuse to ignore her. He could not actually be reading as fast as he made it seem.

"If I get that kind of scrutiny, as the person to recommend me into my current position, you're going to also—"

"Oh shut up," Waver finally ground out, throwing the book onto his desk. "I told you before, I wasn't going to help you any more than I already have. No, _nein_, fuck no, _dame_, get someone else to do your dirty work."

Rin could not help but scrunch up her face. "I can't get someone else to do my dirty work, that last apprentice you sent me just—"

"Yeah, yeah, he just oogled your ass and wanted to bukkake you or whatever the hell it is you Japanese people do, I don't care, it isn't my problem." He pointed to the door. "You already got your budget for the remainder of the year. You're the genius, you figure it out. Now, you need to get out of here."

She had been prepared for a long fight—dismissing her offhand was something new. She eyed the elder magus, but decided she would never get anything from his surly poker face. "Fine. If they blow me up for this, I'll make sure it's in your lab so you get to clean up afterward."

It was just another hurdle, she told herself. The higher-ups were starting to breathe down her neck, recovering from the fiasco that the appearance of the Wizard Marshall caused, and it did not bode well for her. They wanted to see what made her the supposed heir apparent to the Second, and she had better get a demonstration going…or else.

Rin, of course, could do it.

Easily.

…If she had more funding.

A lot more funding.

_It would have been nice,_ she thought, _if that old man had left me more to work with himself. Where does he get his stuff, anyway? _She had long ago gotten past the oh-god-the-grand-sorcerer-himself-is-here-he's-going-to-kill-me stage and was well into the why-couldn't-you-have-thrown-me-a-bone point. Even if she should just be happy that he did not want to wipe her out of existence for knowing some of his Truth.

It did not help that her time at the Tower was full of additional annoyances. From that Edelfelt heir getting her booted out of the dorms to the lack of potential apprentices—or at least, lack of ones that weren't just interested in the exotic barbarian girl—to the fact that she hadn't even been outside in _days_ because she had spent nearly a week just sleeping in her lab. Cafeteria food was also starting to get tiresome, with the only break in that being some snacks Sakura and Shirou had sent with a care package some weeks ago. And no amount of perfume or spell trickery could make up for a bath. A real bath.

"No, you can't use my bath, so get out," Waver said, like he could read her mind. He made a shooing motion toward the door.

Rin felt like flipping his desk end-over-end at that. The man had somewhere along the line decided to import a deep furo-styled bath to his own living space. There had been some commotion when it was revealed, mostly due to the fact that it was revealed because some of his secret admirers had tried to sneak a peek at him in it once. "I wasn't…never mind. I'll come back tomorrow to complain when you're in a better mood."

"If you have that kind of time, you have the time to get your project done."

The words that every student, regardless to their talent or ability, _hated_ to hear from their professor. Rin made sure to slam the door harder than was necessary behind her. She fumed for a moment in the hall, then took a few deep breaths and made back for her workspace.

Only for the unpleasantness to increase tenfold as she neared the staircase back down. Enforcers, Magus Killers, a rather large number of them, towing someone in chains.

"Oh, geh," Rin could not manage to keep from vocalizing her contempt. It was not the contempt that most of the students had, however.

There were five Enforcers—a strangely large number, considering their charge was a handspan shorter and looked around Rin's age. Rin was not even sure she had ever seen such a number clustered together. Since they were generally considered magecraft janitors, most of the Association looked down on them as individuals. A large group would certainly attract attention, and not the good kind. Rin herself just really did not like one of them, a towheaded man named Jane that leered at her whenever she saw him. Though she suspected it was just his default expression, it never failed to set her on edge. She had not met the other men, though the one leading the procession she had met on a couple of occasions.

They stopped when they caught sight of her—also not good. Thankfully, it was rose-haired Bazett, the one she was comfortable with, to speak up. "Hey, Tohsaka, great, just the person I wanted to see."

Rin tried not to let the fact that a sensation akin to a lizard crawling up under her skirt and through her clothes washed over her. She gave a polite smile. "That sounds ominous."

"Give me a second, I need to check in with your Lord of No Smiles first," Bazett said. "I'm sure you're probably busy, but this is rather important."

The suited woman swept past Rin, knocking once on Waver Velvet's door before diving in. Rin thought she heard Waver's immediate complaint with Bazett's no-nonsense manner before the door closed behind the Enforcer.

Bringing Rin's attention back to the group and their prisoner.

It just became more and more strange as she processed it all. The boy was shackled; that was, at least to Rin's knowledge, fairly common. But instead of a gag in his mouth as was also regular to contain a spellcaster, he had cloth around his eyes instead. Rin recognized the kind of Conceptual Weapon it was, clamped down on the involuntary shiver that tried to climb her spine once again. Like the shroud that Shirou had been forced to wear during the Grail War, the wrappings were meant to contain some kind of magical force. The fact that it was a full covering rather than the Mystic Killer lenses that Rider wore suggested something even more distressing than Cybele, and _that_ was certainly worth some curiosity.

Though she could not discern his ethnicity without a good look at all of his facial features, after a moment's silence he revealed it on his own by asking, in Japanese, "You know, if we're going to be here for a while, is there a chair or something?"

Before Rin could respond, though, the biggest of the bunch, the one standing directly behind the boy, grabbed the prisoner by the shoulders and shoved him forward. "Pipe down," the Enforcer said in English.

"Hey," Rin complained, "You even understand what he said?"

"Like I care what a dead guy has to say."

"You magicians don't seem to understand 'elevator' so we climbed something like five stories, and these chains are kind of heavy. No? I'm just gonna sit down, then." The prisoner plopped himself down on the floor right there.

And the big one promptly grabbed him by his collar and hauled him back up to his feet. "Get up, you idgit."

"Caleg, if you don't stop harassing him, I'll hit you into next Tuesday, I swear." Bazett was back in the hall at that, frowning at the bigger man.

Rin would have been, too, if Jane, off to one side, were not giving her the same creepy stare that made her both want to take a shower to cleanse herself, and not take one because that's how horror movies featuring guys like that went bad.

"So, he wouldn't exactly say 'no,' so I got all the permission I needed," Bazett said. "This guy," she motioned to the shackled person, "he's from Japan. There's some delicate issues here regarding some of the people above even El-Melloi's head and some infighting already taking place over this one's status."

"Uh huh." Rin was already starting to see where this was heading, and she did not like it one bit. "So, when you talk about 'permission'…" she glanced to the prisoner, who was shifting from foot to foot in discomfort.

"Your advisor is the only person who really doesn't care and has some clout, so we were thinking of leaving him in his custody. He absolutely refused before, though, so I thought that it might work if we left him in _your_ hands." Bazett gave a helpless shrug. "He'd technically be under the El-Melloi jurisdiction then, and well, this guy might be more comfortable with someone his age and nationality."

"I don't—"

Bazett continued on, raising her voice to drown out Rin's defense. "We already have a lab that's been cleared out for him to stay in nearby. You'd just have to check in on him from time to time. And no, before you ask, I'm already due to be in Italy yesterday, and there is no way I'm leaving any of these clowns to take care of a pet dog, much less a person."

Rin could not help but eye the other Enforcers briefly in agreement. The big one, Caleg, sneered in return.

"Please, I know this sounds strange, but it might be the only chance this guy gets. You'll understand if you talk to him a bit."

Though the shroud still obscured his vision, the prisoner did seem to stare right at her when she glanced his way, his eyes assuredly making contact with hers if they were not obstructed. She was on the curious side to what was going on, and the obnoxious treatment he was getting did trip that protective instinct. A long, hissing sigh escaped from Rin's lips. "Do I have 'pro bono' stamped on my forehead or something? Or am I just really that much of a pushover?"

Bazett smiled, small and understated, then seemed to consciously compose herself. "I'll be back in a couple of weeks or so, so try to keep him in one piece until then? I left a brief and all in the lab, 1107, that explains everything."

"Fine." Rin looked back over her shoulder at Waver's office door, now understanding why he was trying to get her to leave. In his own way, the professor was attempting to help her with her work—by keeping her out of this situation. _It seems I had this coming._ "Fine, just go before I change my mind."

Bazett did exactly that, nodding her head down the hall in the opposite direction. The other Enforcers followed, Caleg pulling at the prisoner's collar again when he tried to go with them.

"No," Rin said in Japanese, batting Caleg's hand away and motioning for him to follow his peers. The man rolled his eyes and made a "forget you" kind of gesture. "They're leaving you with me. We're going back down some stairs and then you'll be able to sit, alright?"

He perked up at her change of language, a look of relief washing over what she could make of his face. "Oh, hey, I thought that Bazett would be the only one. Uh, lead on. I can follow by sound for the most part."

Rin could not help but test it out first thing. The hall they were in was actually fairly wide, the wall opposite to Waver's office a good couple of meters away. She started directly for it as if it were not an obstruction, watched to see how the prisoner reacted.

When he did not move to follow until _after_ she had turned her steps down the hall lengthwise, she started to look at him much more carefully. "Okay, what are you doing? Faking some kind of injury? Can you really actually see from under that thing?"

A full grin broke out on his face. "Am I that transparent?"

"You're not going to fool me with that kind of sloppy acting. I see why they're keeping you in shackles."

"Hmm, are you really sure you're _seeing_ it, though?" His grin only widened. "Oh, forget it. No, I can't see from this, but like I said, I can follow by sound, could feel that the air current only moved one direction, that sort of thing. Just, like, make sure to tell me if there's a piece of furniture in my way and we should be good."

"Keep grinning like that and I'll send you through an obstacle course." Sighing again, Rin considered whether she was getting some kind of cosmic karmic retribution of some sort and getting stuck with the smart mouths of the world. "What's your name, anyway?"

"Shiki Tohno," he said, holding out his hand.

Rin stared at it.

"No good? Isn't that what people do in England?"

It could not be that she got karmic retribution by being stuck with idiots, though, since she reached out and took his offered hand. Going on that same idea of films, the things she had once sat around with her sister watching also ended up with this sort of situation pulling her into a hostage predicament.

But he simply shook it once. "So, can we go? My feet are killing me."

It was a fleeting thought, but something that made something in the pit of her stomach feel like it dropped. She remembered shaking hands with someone else, before, someone else with a wrapping around part of his body and terrible prospects for the future. It was not exactly déjà vu, but the sudden echo it brought to mind gave her a strong sense of disconnection. It might have been the way this Shiki smiled, too, that helped it along.

Here was another idiot, she knew, and she was going to rue the day she agreed to shake his hand. "Then you should kill them first," she said.

The sound that escaped his mouth was like the noise a horse might make as he unsuccessfully clamped his jaw down on a laugh. "Also, not to sound like a demanding guest or anything—"

"Though I'm sure it will, and you're still asking…"

"I've heard bad things about English food. If you're Japanese, you wouldn't happen to have something from home?"

Rin sighed. Shackled and blinded for what was probably some terrible reason, and he wanted snacks? "I'll figure something out. Maybe." She rolled her eyes. "Rin Tohsaka, by the way. I guess I'm your babysitter for the foreseeable future."

"Babysitter, huh? Does that mean we could go someplace? I've always wanted to visit the London Eye."

_You'll understand if you talk to him a bit_, Bazett had said. Rin decided then and there she was going to curse Bazett sick for a week for this treachery.

* * *

To be continued.


	2. Chapter 2

What I See

Chapter 2: To Hear Loss

* * *

There was one good thing to be had from this.

"Funding. Oh _yes_." Rin's voice came out breathless and overcome. "Bazett, you are the best babysitting employer ever."

The room that had been set aside did have the promised information—or at least, some information, probably not all of it—as well as "coverage." Rin had not participated in any of the Enforcer work that occurred, though she kept an eye out in case things turned toward her family. One thing that the so-called janitors of the tower did have, however, was plenty of money. Apparently Bazett had left behind a stipend for doing the work that ought to be handled by someone within the profession.

"Great!" Shiki said. "Can we order a pizza?"

Sighing, Rin admitted to herself that it was somehow partially due to this guy that she would receive such money. "I'll think about it. There are chairs all around, uh, here, I'll point you to one."

The lab was part office space, part teaching space. While it was smaller than the lecture halls, there were four tables set out to one side of the room. To the uninitiated, it would probably resemble a small class space for the sciences. There were four sinks on the far wall behind the tables like one might find in a biology or chemistry class, even.

Of course, the devices on the front desk where the instructor would be did not resemble anything in modern schools. Or this century, for that matter.

Along with the stack of bank notes, there was a file as Bazett promised. After getting Shiki seated, Rin thumbed through them, deciding she would read carefully later. The general idea, though, was just as Bazett had said: Shiki Tohno, the target, wanted by a few of the different department heads within the tower. Information about his last known address. References to ties with the Holy Church; Rin considered calling in a few favors if she decided to pursue information there. Basic family info. Some rather long paragraphs regarding said family's history.

"Demon blooded, huh?" Rin asked, eyeing the young man for any kind of interesting reaction. She was not rewarded with any when he shrugged. "Didn't think you were _normal_."

"Speaking of blood, I also have anemia. If we're going to get pizza, it'd be better sooner than later."

Rin wondered if she was capable of hitting a blind person. "Anemia my left foot. Blood sucker?"

Shiki shrugged again. "Not as far as I know. That'd be, uh, well." He appeared to consider for a moment. "If that were true, I'm pretty sure I'd be in a completely different situation right now."

_Like as food for dust mites,_ Rin bit back on saying aloud. It was not a regular occurrence—the Church favored doing it over the Association—but had this guy been a Dead Apostle, it was pretty set that Bazett would have just killed him and brought his body back for whatever it was the department heads wanted. Still, if he had some kind of separate ancestry that included blood-sucking, Rin thought she might at least have some kind of mental preparation. "I'm sure you would." She sighed. Regardless to his brazen attitude, she thought it might be unlikely that he had been fed while with the other Enforcer hard-asses. "I'll go find a phone and get something, I suppose." She went nearly cross-eyed as her brow fell. "Anything for your _anemia_? Need some supplements on top of it all?"

His eyebrows went up beneath the blindfold and he took on what she assumed to be a _well now that you mention it_ expression. "If we're getting pizza, some breadsti—"

"Forget it." She rolled her eyes. "Anything else, your highness?"

Shiki yawned and stretched. The chains anchored to his wrists chimed obnoxiously as he raised his arms above his head. "How does this work, anyway? Am I supposed to just sleep on the hard floor, or what?"

"No. The storage space should have some cushions or a mattress and I know there are some blankets around. A lot of us spend too much time here." Far too much time, the magus decided. The fact that she knew the closet spaces kept things for sleeping was information she should not be proud to know. "I'll drag some in here after I get food."

"And, uh, where's the bathroom?"

"I put the doorway to it directly behind you." She allowed herself a grin. "There's also a decontamination shower, if I need to waterboard you, just in case you're thinking of misbehaving."

The insufferable grin she had caught him with once or twice already returned in full-force. "They teach you that here at magic academy? All of you must be horrible people."

"Horrible people in charge of whether you eat tonight." She wished now he could see her flat glare. "Just, keep out of trouble. There's nothing in here that'll help you escape."

When she was almost to the door, she heard him grumble, "No black olives. I hate black olives."

Rin immediately thought that she would order something with a double serving of black olives. But then she stopped to consider that he knew she was likely to be that petty and had complained aloud as a ploy. If she gave him food full of olives that he actually _liked_—

But if he really _didn't_ like them—

Her mind was still running in circles when she called in the order.

* * *

Rin returned to her apartment that night. With extra funds, she did not need to stress out for a little while longer. Too, regarding her new charge, if he was looking to escape, she thought it would be after a couple of days passed—time enough for him to gauge his surroundings and perhaps for his guard to become worn down or pay less attention. Either way, she was going to take a good long bath and rest easy, both to prepare herself for development time that worked against her or an uncooperative prisoner.

* * *

She cautiously checked in on him the next day.

The wards were strangely untouched. The boundary field surrounding the room was subtle and multi-layered; If this Shiki was a magus of any kind, there should have been signs. Even as untrained as they were, Rin knew that keeping Sakura or Shirou within the confines of such a room would have shown some things—whether probing from Sakura's spellwork or even signs that Shirou had been analyzing the structure of the building. The field was sensitive enough that any magical signature should have shown _something_. And even as generally amiable Shiki had seemed about his situation, he had also shown a certain amount of curiosity. Apparently, whatever ability he might have to look around did not include something that was within the realm of "magecraft." She considered if that meant she should look into installing a webcam, just to be cautious.

Of course, that idea was thrown out in the face of her familiarity with that technology being limited to "it exists."

She knocked on the door a couple of times before entering. The large, old doors to the lab were thick enough that sound did not carry through, so even if he told her to keep out, she would not hear it.

Thankfully, he was not naked and switching into the clothes she had left for him the evening before. In fact, he was not even awake, sprawled out on the sleeping bag they had found for him. Despite knowing what time it was, Rin still glanced to her wrist to see that it was indeed after noon.

Shiki Tohno was not, apparently, a morning person. In fact, if she did not wake him, he might not even be an afternoon person.

For a fleeting moment, she considered making good on her threat of waterboarding and dumping a bucket of water on his face to wake him up. His parting shot at her—commenting that a girl like her should not be eating the pizza she'd brought, else it'd go right to her hips—was not something she would _ever_ forget. It was doubly infuriating because he seemed unafraid to speak it. She knew another idiot that often seemed to think various terrible things to say, but he was at least wise enough to not speak the majority of them aloud.

Of course, she still punished him whenever she caught the look on his face that said as much as his mouth could.

Deciding she would wait on the more severe wake-up call, she jabbed him with her foot instead. "Hey. Blind boy. If you don't wake up, I'm okay to leave you here without another meal."

He made a sound like a large dog had both a cough and a sneeze at the same time, followed by a long, low groan.

"I can't imagine you actually stayed up late if, as you said, you were awake for most of the flight from Japan." Rin crossed her arms in front of her chest and tapped her foot, though he would only hear the latter.

The vocalization he made sounded like an attempt at _good morning_ and came out something like "Mookorng."

Rin set the bags she had brought with her down at her feet. "I went grocery shopping, so you have stuff to eat so I don't have to check in on you every few hours. I hope you get _fat_ on it all."

"I'm only twenty. I've got at least another year or two of eating like a pig before it shows."

There was a burning sensation to the back of Rin's neck as the jab he gave the previous night came back to the forefront of her mind. "Then what, you just think _I'm already fat_?"

"Er. How old are you again?"

In less than ten seconds, he had already implied she was overweight and was asking her about her age. She was going to throttle him. Repeatedly. _While sitting on him_ to see how much he liked her weight _then_. "The _same_ age."

His eyebrows appeared again, shooting up in surprise. "Oh. _Oh_. Sorry. I thought you were at least that Bazett's age. You sound older."

"Bazett's only twenty-five, genius."

"No, I figured around that. I mean, you talk like you're more mature." He raised his hands when she took a step forward. "I don't mean it in a bad way! No cracks about thirty-somethings, I promise."

Rin fumed, but kept her fists to her sides. "Why don't you take that thing off your head and take a look for yourself? I promise, whatever magic is there, it won't work on me." Not that she actually could promise such a thing, but she had a few tricks that would slow or at least temporarily disable even Rider's vision. She was not exactly unprepared.

The slow way his posture changed, from jokingly alarmed to subdued was noticeable. He set his hands back down, brushing along the chains that anchored him to the weights just beyond his reach. "I think I'll pass, thanks."

For some reason, despite all the other harassing remarks he had made, that had her truly curious.

She decided not to let him know. If she could figure this out on her own, it might put them back on the footing this situation ought to naturally fall under.

* * *

Over the next few days she moved her work to the lab Shiki was kept in. It was not a difficult task; the complexities behind the Kaleidoscope magic were things she had conceptually grasped in the final fight of the Grail War. The process was something that, with the right tools, she could do with relative ease. Those tools simply cost much more than she had ready access to. Now that she had additional funding, the process to replicate the gem sword was simply an otherwise boring affair. It would not even produce anything until the process was nearly finished—the sword base she had for it was even a useless device if Shiki considered stealing it.

For Shirou, it had meant copying the sword—ultimately no different than anything else his specialized brand of magic did. Though it was a Mystic Code that he did not have the mental processes to activate, Rin would forever hold a tiny grudge in her heart over the fact that he could recreate the entire weapon without much effort.

For her, it meant actualizing the crystals she had into a specific, transmuted form. That meant a process not unlike the one she underwent when charging her jewels with energy. It meant she sat around, bleeding from one limb, while drinking a box of orange juice from the other.

"You're insane. Magi are insane. You're all insane."

Rin ignored him as Shiki ranted on and on, pacing back and forth in front of the desk she was using, apparently so disturbed he did not care about the weight that pulled at him with each step he took. It was the second time she had come in to work and proceeded to gouge herself with a needle to draw blood.

"Crazy, terrible, terrifying people. What the hell? You're monsters. You destroy things like Dead Apostles, calling them monsters. You're the monsters. You're horrible, horrible things. Creatures without hope."

"Just so you know," Rin said, sighing, "Most magi don't care about Dead Apostles or call them anything but Dead Apostles. Usually the Church is the one that calls them things."

"I bet you wouldn't bat an eyelash at the dentist, either." The chained man gave a full-body shiver. "Beasts, vermin, horrible nightmares the likes of which—"

Rin finished her last draw and slapped a bandage over the small wound. "Alright, fine, I'll bite. Why are we so bad." She did not even set it as a question, her words coming out flat and uninspired.

"Jamming needles into yourself? _Voluntarily_ sticking something tiny and sharp just under your _own_ skin? And it isn't even for some kind of drug? I mean, that I'd get, but, you're doing it just because you can? _Why_? _What kind of broken mind does that_?"

"Someone hated getting inoculated before school," Rin said.

"That's _normal_. You're a _monster_."

Though once again he could not see it, Rin motioned to the wrappings over his eyes. "That your problem? You can't stand sharp things? No surgeries to get your eyesight fixed?"

Shiki visibly shrank away, wilting at the suggestion. "Poking things into your _eyes_?" Though said eyes were unable to convey an emotion, the rest of him looked positively repulsed. "I get it, I get it. Not a word more about your weight. Your hips are fine. They're perfect. Sculpted by Michelangelo himself. You're a heavenly angel that brings peace to the dying, appears with great tidings of giddy joy for virgin women."

"Mmm hmm. Angels also killed a bunch of firstborns in Egypt, if I recall correctly."

The nervous way his head turned away suggested he had thought of that too.

"Keep it up. I have plenty of tiny pointy things to poke and prod you with if I must." She leaned over the desk and made to hit him upside the head—

He ducked out of the way.

It killed her. It really killed her. She resisted the urge to just reach for his throat and squeeze. "_Alright_, just give it to me straight. I must be stupid for asking, but I have to know. What the hell are you here for? Do you even know?"

He gave a straight answer. Too straight an answer. "Because those guys grabbed me."

Rin pinched at the bridge of her nose. "I don't mean _how_ you got here. _Why_ are you here? I'm asking why those Enforcers grabbed you."

"No clue. I mean, I've met one or two of your kind before, sure. But they never seemed interested in me. Not like this, anyway. Those guys, the ones that grabbed me, they didn't either, really, but they did say something about others being interested. Don't know anything more than that."

Though it was a stupid question on the surface—he was blindfolded and they were trained opponents—the little bits of how aware he seemed to be compelled her to ask anyway. "And you didn't fight back?"

"Well, yeah, at first. When I didn't know that they wanted me alive."

"How did you figure out they wanted you alive?"

"Ehhhhh." The man shuddered from what looked like the very tips of his toes right up his legs and back. "That woman, Bazett? I could, uh, tell that she was doing so."

Rin looked suspicious. If he had been covering up the term "to see" rather than "tell," she might understand the way his words meandered. The more she spoke with him, however, the more she picked up on the fact that containing his eyesight was self-inflicted. If he was doing it to himself, there was no reason to hide that he could somehow still see through it. She sat back down and leaned back in her seat. "Uh huh. How could you _tell_?"

He took that as a cue, sitting down as well. "Well, I can _tell_ that you practice martial arts. A Chinese form?"

Rin was rather glad he could not actually see her expressions. It was nice to be able to let herself be visibly surprised, yet not have to suddenly clamp down on it. Everyone else in her life always gave her endless trouble whenever she let things visibly trouble her. "I haven't even done anything that would say that."

"You walk like a person who does. One of my cousins trains in that style, too. It's a lot different from Japanese forms like karate or aikido because of the footwork."

The time earlier, when she had tested out how aware he was of his surroundings seemed to come back around to her. The general idea was rather similar—just paying attention to how people moved. Rin supposed that it would make sense, that if someone was familiar enough with close combat forms, they might be able to discern something about another practitioner by how they walked. Even Sakura and Shirou, neither of which practiced hand-to-hand martial arts, did have a preference to leading off with their left side because of their time with archery. It was something Rin knew if she thought about it consciously, though she never would have purposefully considered it like this Shiki did.

She sighed. "Okay, Sherlock, that may be true, but what does it have to do with getting caught?"

He leaned back, hands behind his head. "That woman had scary footwork. I mean, _really_ scary. But the first blow she landed on me did nothing but bruise. It was only a glancing blow to my side, though I got the feeling that if she wanted, it'd have blasted a chunk of my body clean from my ribs. Forget whatever it is you magicians do, even. I get the impression she's world-class, even without that stuff." He looked ready to say something else, then shrugged and shut his mouth.

"So _you_ know some kind of martial art too, if you were trading blows." Which made Rin consider what exactly, again, he was—two of the Enforcers were modern types, people who used weaponry like explosives and rifles if they needed. The fact that this had come to some kind of close combat battle if they could have just shot him, trapped him, or used a tazer was curious.

"My dad put a Skip-It around my ankles and made me jump five thousand times in a row." He stuck out his chin and shook his leg, the chain around his ankle jangling. "I'm deadly within two meters."

Rin put her chin in her hands. "Nice try. Reminds me that I have a couple more kilos I can add to those chains and they still won't break."

He sighed in disappointment. "So yeah, the scary one hits me a couple of times, I get that if I get away, she might just break my legs the next time we see each other, so yeah. Here I am." Though there were no visible eyes to do so, he seemed to fix her with what would otherwise be a stare. "Didn't she give you something to read about all this?"

"Didn't say much," Rin fudged. The truth was that it did hint at any number of reasons he could be of interest to the Association. Whether it was something relating to his ancestry, the fact that he had a complicated past, or even his alleged association with a True Ancestor. There were a few things, however, that also concerned her. Though he was infuriating as a person, nothing in his record actually suggested he was some kind of danger. Yes, he had apparently been involved with some issues at his school, but with the Church involved she thought they would have swept that under the rug. He did not seem otherwise like he might threaten the safety of the Association's secrets.

That left a Sealing Designation, though he did not seem to be a magi of any sort. There was no kind of research he might have that would suggest that. Too, the file had not mentioned that tag.

Why him, then—unless he was not their intended target?

"By the way, have any more of that orange juice? Just thinking about your nasty little habits has me feeling a little faint."

Despite automatically going for another one of the juice boxes, Rin said, "Then I anxiously await your narcoleptic episode."

* * *

It was a day later, before she had gone to check in on him, that Rin bumped into one of the Enforcers that had caught him: Jane, the one with the creepy eyes. Not only did it simply unnerve her to be around him, but it was no accident that she came across him when he called out her name.

"What?" She set herself against anything he could possibly say, crossing her arms in front of her.

Which meant nearly getting smacked in the face when he tossed a small device at her. "Forgot. That guy we brought in, this was on him. It ran out of power today."

She glared, fingering the boxy phone. "Brilliant. You might have mentioned he had something like this before."

Jane shrugged, though he never once looked away—a decision that made the hairs on Rin's neck stand on end. "Been busy." His look turned even more surly. "You might ask him about it. He got something like four calls from his sister before we left the country. She might start sniffing around."

"And smelling you guys wouldn't take an expert nose," Rin muttered.

His responsibility apparently finished, the blond Enforcer stalked off without another word.

"Ugh." Rin imagined throwing the phone at the back of the man's head.

* * *

"Akiha, was it? Apparently she called you a lot before this died," Rin said, tossing Shiki the device.

As expected, he caught it one-handed despite not even turning his head in her direction. He had taken to lounging in his "bed" listening to music on a player she had somehow convinced Waver Velvet to part with. "Probably."

Rin once more went for her equipment. Shiki shifted nervously in place, clearly still uncomfortable with what she was doing. "So, is that why you're _poking_ around here, asking questions and all?" She grinned to herself when he seemed to flinch at her choice of words.

"Maybe," he admitted.

"I read about how they caught you late at night pretty far from your house, apparently with no reason to be away."

"Uh huh."

"No reason to be out, no hints of danger in your neighborhood, not even a meeting with whoever it is you know with the Church. Just out and about…when five deadly killers are staking out your place."

Shiki slipped his hands beneath the pillow behind his head. "Pretty lucky, yeah."

"You thought they were after your sister."

A chuckle. "Not really."

"Then what?" Rin sat up on the desk, deeming the conversation marginally more interesting than the tedium of her magecraft.

"I pray, to any and all great powers in this world, you never meet my sister. My mind can only take so much terror."

Even as a joke, Rin still managed to see the underlying message. Though it might not be outright concern—he might even think that whatever demonic heritage his sister controlled might stand up to multiple Enforcers—he still seemed to have been away from his home on purpose. If the information about his contacts within the Church was true, Rin was surprised he would not have gone to them for help or asylum.

Though, if he actually thought the people at his door were after his sister, it might explain why he did not go to the Church for help. They probably would not have raised a finger in a half-blood's defense.

Still, if it was the reason he allowed himself to be caught, she understood those kind of motives. Though it was a rather minor concern, the idea that people within the Association would discover that Sakura still had a connection to the Grail—the very device they wanted to punish Rin for losing—was an issue for which she made sure to keep her ear to the ground. "I kind of doubt it would go that way. The Association is pretty well-versed in creature lore. I don't think they'd care…especially about some 'backwater' species that might have descendants in Japan."

The laid-back expression he kept had disappeared completely, replaced by a set jaw. Though his voice still came out easy. "You ever just, I dunno, close your eyes and listen?" Once more, he was going to lead her on some kind of tangential explanation. "Ever realize that sounds might be more important than you first think? Like, the sound of a heartbeat…you know, something simple that we don't think of much when going to the doctor's, but something that's pretty important? Listening to something that says another is alive, real, like you are?"

"You think about strange things."

"All the time. Well, most of the time." He tilted his head and the edges of his lips twitched, like he was going to deliver some kind of joke, then decided against it.

Rolling her eyes, Rin found herself considering, despite herself, leaning her hands back on the desk. "Once, I guess."

A faint smile. "Only once?"

"I usually don't think about strange things." Though once the words passed her lips, she thought perhaps what rated as 'strange' to her was probably very different to even other magi, much less some random person off the street. "Never thought too hard on that sort of thing. Gets depressing after a while."

He kicked his foot so the weight attached to it jumped fractionally. "Boo hoo. I'm shackled in a foreign country that thinks fish and chips are the best thing ever. Give me something, here."

"Some people I know…" Rin found herself wondering if she should just say who, since Shiki had admitted to his sister. "People important to me, I thought at one point they might end up…gone. One of them, I remember doing that, I guess. On accident. Listening to him breathing."

The smile went from his expression again. "Surprising, wasn't it? You know other people are alive like you are, but it's something else when you really listen closely to something they can't do without."

"…I guess."

"Well, it's important to me. Real important. So that's what I thought. I don't really care if it was some kind of maneuver or feint, but if you're going to go that way, I'd treat it as real no matter what." He gave a helpless shrug. "When that woman hit me, though, it was without the kind of threat on life that I'm pretty good at recognizing. So, I surrendered. This one was lenient, so who knows what the next one might be like. This way, maybe, it all gets resolved without violence? Cause, I don't know about you, but I really don't like hurting people. Or being hurt."

That made sense to Rin, at least. If one of the other Enforcers were in charge, or even some of the ones she'd since learned about, like Shirou's father—well, it would not be so bloodless. Even if his sister was not involved at all, someone might make her involved to manipulate the circumstances of his capture. If it had even been in another location, a populated area, it was possible that even Bazett would have purged any witnesses. Magi were just like that.

Still, it was also enough to confirm to her own satisfaction the kind of danger this one could pose. Left unsaid, there was something in the way he spoke that suggested he could still escape from confinement. If anything he was interrogating her as much as she was interrogating him. Figuring out what he was up against, who he was with, what kind of things they wanted him for.

The last one, however, she was still not sure of herself. He had some strange skills and was possibly concealing constantly-active Mystic Eyes like Rider.

"And if it isn't your sister?"

Shiki shrugged again. "Wasn't really willing to take that chance. I don't particularly have any regrets there, even if you decide I need my blood drawn." He shuddered.

When she returned home that evening—probably the last evening she deemed it safe to do so—Rin could not help but eye her phone each time she passed it. Get her dirty clothes into hamper. Eye her phone. Get some food made. Eye her phone. Take a bath. Finally, when she was finished with cleaning up, she decided she would just get it off her mind. It was late enough in London that it would be morning in Japan, though late enough that she knew everyone in the house would be awake.

The phone picked up after only two rings. "Emiya residence."

"It's Rin."

"Tohsaka?" He sounded concerned. She did not usually contact them—or if she did, it was often later in the day for them. "Is something up?"

"No? Just," She tried to make the words she wanted to say sound as casual as she could make them. "It's good to hear you, Shirou."

"…Er. I'm getting Sakura."

When she heard the sound of him putting the receiver down, Rin smashed her forehead onto her desk.

Sakura's voice followed a few moments later. "Nee-san?"

Rin was once more glad that nobody could see her face right then. "It's…it's nothing, really. I just," she scrambled around her thoughts for the right words, "I just wanted to hear how everything was over there."

And she did.

* * *

To be continued.


	3. Chapter 3

What I See

Chapter 3: To Taste Blood

* * *

The litany of curses that the current Lord El-Melloi gave as he made his examination did not abate the entire twenty minutes. The man complained in a distinct, nasal-y voice that was otherwise unlike his regular gruff speech. He would maintain a single language for a couple of minutes, interspersing his regular English expressions within, before moving onward to another language. By the end of the examination, he had covered at least a dozen, each vastly different from one another.

Rin considered the possibility that cursing was in fact Waver's form of an aria. She had never heard him speak words of evocation otherwise.

The elder magus finished his work, tossing a device onto the nearby desk that looked suspiciously similar to the simple light that mundane doctors and optometrists used to examine the eye and cause pupil dilation. "Finished. Put that thing back on before you scare the girl."

As Shiki worked on re-wrapping the blindfold over his eyes, Rin bristled. "I'm not some invalid that faints at the sight of a bug or the like." She refused to admit that she had not watched any of the finer details, keeping Waver's body firmly in place between her and the examination. Nothing good came from even thinking of placing something sharp near the eyes. No matter her curiosity regarding Shiki's secrets, she would not witness the poking and prodding of the ocular organs.

Waver said, "_Silent Hill_. You should try _Silent Hill_." When Rin gave her usual blank look, he growled. "That's even a thing outside of Japan now. Pay attention."

"I'll pay attention to pop culture when your office stops resembling a teenager's basement."

Waver was already ignoring her, instead raising his voice and seemingly addressing a blank spot on the wall. "Alright, lift the field," he said in English. "We're coming out and you can all stop your goddamn grumbling about taking this seriously. I'm taking it _so_ seriously, I know exactly what every single one of you is thinking. So get over it."

There was no retort in response, though Rin could feel the barrier surrounding the room lift. She leaned aside to peer at Shiki, now reclining on the chaise lounge Waver had brought in for the exam. "So, really _really_ blind yet?"

"Nope. Although this ugly mug almost did it," Shiki said, motioning to the elder magus.

"Fuck you. I'd love to see what kind of face you make when forced to jam your shit into some other dude's face. Yes, ha ha, that was a joke." He collected his equipment and bagged it all, then made for the door. "Make sure to starve the kid tonight, Rin."

Rin started to make a cat's grin to worry Shiki, then scowled to herself at him being unable to see it. "That sounds like a great idea. Maybe he'll be too faint from hunger the next time to be a smartass."

"What goes into my stomach has nothing to do with how smart my ass is," Shiki said.

Outside, the crowd that had assembled was larger than when Rin and Waver had entered the room. Various department heads, department deputies, lords, ladies, and various people important to the numerous factions within the tower were present, observing the room using the clairvoyance spell connected to the boundary field. Some looked only mildly interested, leaning against the walls or seated on one of the couches along the hall, while others were right next to the door waiting in ambush for the results. Rin spotted one of the Enforcers that had been with Bazett before, one she didn't know the name of but who watched the crowd with the kind of anticipation of one who thought a fight might break out right then and there.

Waver said, "He's got exactly what you think, and it's doing exactly what you think. Probably." The department heads all murmured to their confidants at the confirmation. Waver made a face, still obviously irritated with being called away from his own work to be the neutral party. "Alright, the show's over. Get out. Go scheme your backstabbing where the victim can't hear it. Or at least where I can't hear it. In fact, that's the more important one." He made a shooing motion.

The assembled magi all did so, slowly, watching closely as Rin closed the door to the lab behind her and keyed it locked. Though it was not a sufficient defense to a truly determined magus if they wanted into the room, it was Rin's way of reminding everyone who was still in charge of this person's life. While a few of the departments still had nothing but derision for the foreign magus, the fact that eyes were on her regarding the Second Magic had enough people guessing at the scope of her power and unwilling to make a complete enemy out of her. Yet.

Waver and Rin both waited for the crowd to disperse, eyeing each person and sizing up the possibility of a confrontation to occur. The tension when they had arrived earlier was noticeable enough—thus people calling them in for a neutral party assessment. Now it seemed ready for some kind of explosive turn. Still, Rin had to admit that she was surprised at how long they had actually taken. Bazett's notes suggested this would be a bigger issue than most Sealing Designation situations. It was not helped by members of Lorelei Barthomeloi's Canticle Brigade standing at attention to one side, looking ready for an apocalypse.

When all had retreated—all save for the handful of familiars hiding out unseen in various nooks and crannies, eyeing one another like soldiers from opposite trenches—Waver did not say anything when Rin followed after him at the last.

"Fraga's notes didn't say anything, did they?" Waver asked when they were within the confines of his office.

"Not anything specific. They mentioned his true parentage and briefly mentioned animosity between him and some of the magi here. But the info seemed to hint that whatever was important about him, it wasn't to be written down."

"Beh." The noise the lecturer made was half-snort, half-grumble, all-annoyance. "It has to be a secret. Meaning everyone knows, of course."

"I don't know what would be so strange about a set of Mystic Eyes. Unless they happen to be some strange, demon-lineage thing that is completely lost to time, but even then that wouldn't be cause for commotion."

"Part of the commotion probably has to do with what he might've done with them, but a lot of it is something like a lost lineage," Waver said. "The Mystic Eyes of Direct Death. 'Death Perception' or whatever your scribble books call them."

Rin filed the "scribble books" jab away for a time in the future when she proved more knowledgeable than Waver. Though the Tohsaka family might still seem backwater to the regulars in the Association, the tomes she once learned from still had a wealth of information.

It was bound to happen someday.

Really.

"The ones like in legend? How can you even be sure?" It was not like they had a comparison—the only other recorded instance for such a thing occurring was back in the Age of Gods, if even that. It would be like coming across someone else with Rider's Mystic Eyes: if one did not already know of her identity, Rider's power might not be recognized unless demonstrated.

Waver looked annoyed. Of course, he looked annoyed most of the time they spoke. "Process of elimination. Don't they teach logic in school anymore?" He waved off any response Rin might have made, though she did not feel like rising to that argument. "The color profile is within the scope. When you examine both his physical response to visual stimuli, as well as consider his history, others within the color range are invalidated. His family history of Pure Eyes also makes for an interesting implication. But ultimately, the main tell is the constant activation and how it affects his health. Conceptually, other possible abilities would not bring him to this point."

"He's dying," Rin said. Though she had not examined him herself, the conclusion was not a difficult leap for her to make. If nothing else, Waver probably would not bother explaining something less dire.

"Brain might as well be liquefying. He's got a constantly-active circuit in a body that wasn't meant to house that power. He's a computer with an overheating processor." At Rin's blank look, he rolled his eyes and tossed the tool bag onto an empty chair. "If you don't learn something so basic, your generation will disown you."

Rin's mind was far afield from that consideration. She knew that Mystic Eyes of high enough color were dangerous, but generally they were harmless to the user. Some abilities could cause the wielder problems—Rider of course wore Mystic Killers or Breaker Gorgon to keep from instantly freezing everything within her vision—but such magic should not have been a danger to a wielder. Not unless one did something like attempt to transplant Rider's eyes—eyes no mere human could hope to possess—and use them.

The thought of Shirou, arm replaced by that of a Heroic Spirit, flittered through her head. It killed him, too, or would have without Illya's intervention.

Waver settled into his chair. "Meanwhile, he's apparently _used_ them. On things you really probably shouldn't. That's what has Lorelei's panties all in a twist, anyway. Not sure if that means she wants to kill him or get boned by him. Probably both." He pulled out a small device that looked suspiciously like a game console, though the stylus made Rin uncertain.

They sat like that for a while, Rin contemplating the various implications of what was found, Waver doing something—whether playing a game or writing down digital notes was unclear. Neither looked very happy, regardless.

"They put a designation on him so they could have access to his eyes," Rin thought aloud. "But, why?"

"The bigwigs in the other departments want him because he's got a connection to the source. Well, except for Lorelei, but she's a nutbar among nuts."

Rin grimaced, even though her own thoughts were turning in that direction. If members of the Association still looked at the terrible results of the Holy Grail War as an acceptable loss if it meant reaching Akasha, then one man's life was absolutely nothing. The connection seemed more tentative to her, though. "Is it really that big a deal, though? I mean, as much as it might be foreign to his body, it seems like his own command over it would be as good as it got unless he were part of a stronger phantasmal lineage. No way harvesting it from him and using them would work nearly as well." Rin flopped down into the other open chair. "And for what? So you can kill something faster while it kills you?"

"I wonder about that. The original actualized death by gazing upon a target. That's it. Nothing else needed." Waver scratched at his chin with the stylus. "It actualizes a future event in the present."

"Well…"

The lecturer glanced at a pile of paperwork on his desk with the kind of scowl one reserved for the most foul of evils. He seemed to throw out the idea that he would do them in favor of whatever it was he had in his hand. "You might as well say he is seeing into the inevitable future. He isn't so much making some impossibility real as he can see all eventualities made possible. A Truth. Something kept in the records of Akasha. Are you saying that half the tower would not think that worth it?" He shrugged, a motion pointing in the vague direction of her lab. "Considering how much they're breathing down your neck over the Heaven's Feel?"

"Well…"

A scowl came to his face again. "You're not helpful. And you've got me off-track. This is your thing now. Go on, get moving. I have work to do."

Rin returned his scowl with one of her own. "You mean, work for your maid to do."

"I will eat both your shoes and mine if that thing could deliver a competent lecture."

* * *

Though she had no reason to, Rin still knocked every time even though she just opened the door immediately after. "I brought food," she said, a pizza box in hand.

"I thought you were starving me into submission."

Rin turned on her heel back for the door. "I guess that means you don't want any."

Shiki was certainly quick to respond, falling to his hands and knees before she could even go for the door handle. "Please, this humble one begs for even the slightest of nourishment from the benevolent ruler of this estate."

"You have no pride." She sat herself at the desk again, set the box atop it.

"Not true. But no man should be prideful enough to turn away food." He paused, looked thoughtful. "I'm sure there are some, but they're morons."

Rin glanced at the clock atop the desk, considering. She had to get back to her personal lab to get work done at the hour if she wanted to get work done efficiently. But she was still just too curious not to ask. "So. Mind telling me some things first?"

He considered. "Well, if it's for a pretty girl like you…"

"You must have quite the imagination. You don't know if I'm pretty."

"Eh." He stretched, rolling his wrists in circles. "I can just tell. Any guy could. It's a thing. Promotes the future of our species."

"That's why stupid boys still exist?"

"Also, delivery girls are especially good looking."

She resisted the urge to Gandr him right there. "I'll put a vegetable garden in here tomorrow, and then you can farm your own food."

"Prideful girls from high society even more than that." He made to say something else, stopped, considered, then said, "Don't ever tell my sister I said that."

Rin sighed. She resolved that she _would_ starve the mouth right off him next time. "Guess I'd better let you eat now, or I'll never get a word in edgewise." She shoved the box his way, and he took a slice out before returning to the chaise lounge. He apparently favored the piece of furniture to the futon she had brought in before or the other chairs.

When he was finishing with his slice and had yet to spout out more jokes, she went straight for the point. "You make it seem like you could get out. I get the feeling that you'd have a chance, if you really tried. So, why don't you?"

He swallowed the last bite he had. "Who says I won't?"

"Well, why haven't you tried already?"

"I prefer to do things when I know I can do them. Right now everything is still a big 'what if.' Also, my English isn't exactly great. Blind and mute in a foreign country? Ugh."

Rin crossed her arms. "You're dodging my question."

"I sure am."

"We know what your eyes are. What they see. What they could possibly do. Obviously, you're not going to be staring people to death like in the legends, but they could do a lot of terrible things. More than what you suggested with Bazett. And I can't imagine they're going to just kill you right here and now if you take that thing off. So, why? You could use them, could get out of this predicament, right?"

For a moment, she thought he might then and there, as he fiddled with the bottom flap of the shroud. "You're right." His voice came out quiet, subdued; it contrasted with the joking manner he usually took on. Suddenly he sounded older, more affected than he should. "I could." He shifted a leg so the chain around it jangled. "I could destroy these chains right now. They're really nothing, nothing that even my fingernails couldn't handle." His head lulled toward her, slowly, almost like the sedate turn of the seconds hand on an analog clock. "When you go home tonight, I could break out of these bindings. I could cut down the doors, end the spell I know you've got observing me. I could fight any guards that might be in this place and end their life before anyone knew what was going on. Seven, eight, nine at a time. Until there's nobody left to throw at me. I could then destroy the entire building, watch it take the remaining lives with it. It would crumble to the dust it's destined to be in a thousand years, all in an instant, all at once."

Though he had not moved from his seat, somehow the vibrations of his voice seemed to move over her, crawl atop her, making it difficult for her to take a breath.

"And for the survivors, I could punish you. I could wreck any thought you might have of coming after me. I could show you what it means to threaten others, threaten those with less power than yourself just to pursue your stupid fascination with something you can't even adequately explain. I could hunt down your family, be a guillotine above their heads, just long enough to make _you_ wonder whether you should just turn yourself in to certain death so they can be safe. So _you_ feel the helplessness."

Rin knew he was not threatening her specifically. But the fact that she did have family, did have the same kind of vulnerability, made it extremely easy to understand this line of reasoning. "You think you could do that? To the entire Association? I hate to say it, but people like Bazett are far from the most dangerous people here."

His voice was low, simple, completely earnest. "And I've killed far worse."

Rin shivered.

"It isn't just the killing, though. It's in the everything else. You take notice when you have one of your senses taken away. Things that would normally go right by your attention are suddenly profound. I can make that my advantage. I know this place is in the public eye, not hidden away like out of a fantasy book. If we aren't on museum grounds, we're real close. I know you magi will keep from doing much of your real flashy stuff because you want to keep everything a secret."

He turned his head back and forth, as if looking around the room despite his disability. "All of the halls here echo. You magi all need to chant stuff to get a spell off. It's hard for you to be stealthy. Oh," he waved her off before she could retort, "I know there's got to be things some of you can do that are silent. I'm just pointing it out. _Some_ of you I'll instantly be aware of when you come for me."

"But not all."

"Not all. No, I really can't consider everything. I'm not really that kind of person anyway. I just do what I can." He shrugged. "You'd be surprised at what I can do when I'm _not_ thinking. When it all comes down to _instinct_. To what you magi fill in with the procedures to make a spell. My mind gets filled with other things. Mostly what is effective at making people dead faster. And why they make people dead faster."

Rin blinked. "_Why_?"

He seemed to settle back down further on the chaise. Rin thought of the images people often immediately turned to, of psychiatrists and patients, though she wondered if the roles were reversed here. "You stare at death too long, you start looking for the why. Why things always turn that way. Why destiny seems to have it in for some and not for others. Why everything is connected to an end, any end." He sighed. "Why your life is somehow more important than mine."

"I'm not following."

"I paid attention when your Enforcers grabbed me. I listened to what they talked about on the trip here. I know you all are willing to risk your life for your goals. That's great." His head rolled back as if to stare off in the distance. Rin considered the possibility that somehow he still managed to maintain some form of orientation and could even now tell which direction was the most direct route one could take to reach Japan. "But you also don't value others even when you're willing to risk yourself. Your kind forgets that everyone has something precious to them. Whether that's a person, a thing, a location, or some idea up above our heads."

Rin felt like laughing, though an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach kept her from doing so. Of course, those words made sense—they were things she had long ago come to terms with.

"So your Association threatens one of mine, but thinks it is somehow alright, just because they put their own necks out for it? Do they think that because they are willing to risk their own deaths for what I see, they can safely walk all over what I value without endangering theirs?"

"I…guess not." Rin's own voice betrayed her, torn between a desire to proclaim itself in agreement or to whimper like a mouse cornered by a cat.

"Meaning, from their point of view, I'm nothing, and neither is what I value in life. But they are, and what they value is too." He snorted. "I'm just some powerless sucker that gets the raw deal."

"So…" Rin clamped down on that dreaded feeling and pressed on. "You're not powerless, you're actually a terrifying monster that could walk out of here with no problem and possibly kill us all, because you've paid attention, understand what you're fighting for and against, and your enemy doesn't get anything. Why don't you, then?"

Shiki yawned. It was not the kind of yawn that mocked yawning, though it might have been an appropriate response. His mouth went wide and, despite being stuck in the same location for over a week, Rin was certain his ears would pop from it. "Because, that'd be stupid."

The clock on the desk chimed in the hour.

Rin pinched the bridge of her nose. "My own fault. My own fault for expecting some insightful, profound response from a boy. A stupid boy. A stupid boy that has a sixth sense for girls. I need a vacation."

"I'll kidnap you and take you someplace when I make my grand exit." He shifted in place and rubbed at his forehead. "Now I am starting to feel a little faint from hunger. Can I get another piece?"

* * *

When she had the door closed behind her, Rin felt her legs give out and she fell back against it. The conversation went far from where she thought it would go, made her think of things she did not want to be reminded of.

_When I make my grand exit._

He was dying.

_Turn yourself in to certain death._

He was here to die.

They were feelings that were no longer foreign to her. Death had nearly come for her multiple times over the course of the war, and it still hung around, a distant threat, as she worked here within the Association.

She was not willing for that threat to extend to her family. Not anymore. Not after everything they had gone through. But it was not a consideration she merely discarded, thinking her life was a suitable sacrifice for it. She was simply not going to allow anything she did to jeopardize them.

Shiki had a family. He was apparently unwilling to allow anything he did to jeopardize them either.

Rin bit her lip hard enough that it bled.

She was willing to fight for her family in a way the other magi here would not.

Would she be willing to be responsible for the death of one who only wanted the same?

* * *

To be continued.


	4. Chapter 4

What I See

Chapter 4: To Scent Fear

* * *

She could not help it. Absolutely could not help it. As stubborn as she was, it was impossible.

The resolution she had made then, barely alive as her crest and Rider had kept her from teetering over, it once more gripped her and refused to let go. "I should have said so many things" had crashed through her mind multiple times. "I should have spent more time with them" was also there. The fact that Sakura was next to her that time, also hanging on, was immaterial: she had thought she was going to die before, had thought there would be many things left unresolved between them. The third person that was not with them at the time made it seem as if there always would be an empty space.

"Where'd you find Japanese food in this awful place?" Shiki asked. Even if it was just a simple bentou-styled meal with little besides sushi and some karaage, he ate it as if he was starving.

Days had gone by, still with the same stalemate as before, all the various departments staring each other down. Eating a meal was appropriate—Shiki was the last thing on the table, and each magus aware of his existence was eyeing the other magi to see who made the first move. All except El-Melloi, of course, who had better games to play. "Nobody disturbs me for six days at the least," he told her a few days prior. "The new _Suikoden_ is more important than anything else."

She visited Shiki more often. There was nothing much for her to say, however, as her mind considered the various things he spoke of. It was a very familiar spiral of sadness that his situation reeked of.

"I didn't find it anywhere," Rin said. "I made it."

Shiki's chopsticks clattered back into the box. Again, even without the ability to see, he seemed to peer to his captor.

"W-what?" Rin stuttered under the scrutiny, even if it was blind scrutiny.

"What are the laws here regarding shotgun weddings?"

She sighed. "I shudder to think of your love life. Girls want something a bit more romantic than 'let's get married now at some run down place on the side of the road.' At least when they're sober."

"What are the laws here regarding drinking age?"

"Nice try, buster."

He returned to eating his meal, looking more thoughtful than before now that he understood where the food had come from. Joking aside, Rin felt pleased since he had led her to the topic she wanted to breach to begin with. Or at least, obliquely gave her an opening into prying into his life.

"The files on you said that you encountered a True Ancestor. The Lunar Princess. I keep getting the impression you learned some things from her and that 'encounter' is not the best way to describe it."

Shiki snorted, coughed; the action apparently forced food down the wrong way. He beat on his chest to clear it. "You could say that."

"Since the Church and the Association don't get along usually, the info Bazett had access to was kind of vague. I called in a favor or two and found out a bit, though. Apparently you were more than mere acquaintances, according to one of the Burial Agency members."

Rin watched his reactions carefully, trying to read into his thoughts more than any words he gave. It was fascinating information to have dug up, knowledge that this young man was apparently responsible for the annihilation of multiple Apostle Ancestors. To know that he was somehow pulled right into situations that only someone like him could have survived. "I, uh, guess?" he said, nervously laughing and taking another bite.

"So, did you do her?"

This time the rice went flying out of his mouth instead of down his windpipe. "Is nothing sacred?!"

Rin gave a cat-smile. Even if he could not see it. "You have sex with a being beyond mortal ken and you somehow think someone like me who strives for that perfection isn't going to be interested?" Orientation damned, Rin was sure half the Association would drop trou at that kind of opportunity. Even Rin had to guess that if she were presented with that kind of option, she would be hard pressed not to take action.

"Ugh, when you put it like that…" he wiped at his mouth and set his food aside. There was clearly no use if the meal never made it into his stomach. "Not that you'd figure if you ever met her."

"Different than expected?"

"Yeah." He paused, thinking, then waved his hands. "Not like _that_!"

Rin snickered.

Shiki sat back, stretched, the chair he sat in leaning back on two legs. "She's more human than you'd think. I mean, yeah, you can tell there's a difference, and she'd sometimes talk about things that were hard to understand. But she also enjoyed living in a very human way."

Besides the chaise that Waver had brought in for the examination, the room did not have comfortable furniture to lounge in. Rin considered that, since the way Shiki's voice turned toward a nostalgic bent seemed more fitting for a kind of relaxed setting. "Sounds like you were very taken." Considering his rant before on life and treasured things, they sounded like quite the match.

"She'd be my first love, I guess you could say." He stretched again, and Rin was struck by how much he seemed to be doing that. Cooped up in the same room for days on end, he must have been restless. "But she's gone now. 'Till the end of the world."

"End of the world?"

"When she'll wake up to tell everyone they're being too noisy."

Rin could not tell whether he was joking or not. His grin said he was, but the sincerity in his voice said he was not. She decided to ignore it. "Sleeping Beauty, huh?"

The smile somewhat faded from his expression, though it did not go away completely. "No. And her coffin is a bit more sturdy than glass."

"That's Snow White, genius."

"You should be happy, though. With her gone, you can actually compete for the 'fairest in the land' title."

"Still the wrong story." Rin shook her head, tried to keep herself from muttering aloud. The way he would go from serious to jokester like this always suggested that was as far as he was willing to speak on any given topic. Rin would have to try other avenues if he was going to reveal what she was looking for. "Maybe you should read more—oh, sorry, hah."

"I see what you did there. Well, you know what I mean."

* * *

There were days when she did her work in the lab they kept him in. He, of course, hid in corners when it came time to draw blood from her system to charge the gems. Though he could not see what she was doing, he claimed he could make out the sound of the needle piercing her skin.

"This is how you're torturing me. You're a fiend. The devil personified."

"I bet you can't wait until we decide we're going to do a comprehensive examination on you. You'd have to be under anesthetic for it." Rin took one of the empty syringes she had and pumped it so there was a faint whisper of air. "Needle time for Tohno!"

He did not look amused.

When she was not working or attempting to break him psychologically, they talked. They talked about small things, silly things, stupid things. School life in Japan and what their classmates were up to now. Dates they had been on. The fact that Shiki had just missed Culture Day when he was whisked away.

"Although I'm kind of glad now," Shiki said. "I promised to go to an art gallery with Akiha. Not fun."

Rin thought she would agree if she too could not actually see any of the art. "You've mentioned her before. Except you haven't really said much about her besides how she has you whipped. She really that problematic?"

He made a sour face at her comment, but did not seem to consider any counter to it. "Akiha is…well…" he crossed his arms trying to find the words. "She's…hrm…how to say…a terror. A beast. Monstrous. Like a stalker, but she has absolute authority over you rather than following in your wake. Living with her is like living as Anne Frank in Nazi Germany. One wrong move and you're a smear on the wall."

Rin stared.

Shiki ranted on. "You'd think that with how uncomfortable dinners are, she would get the hint. But _no_, she has them every night, demands that you attend in the same weird silence each and every time, and she glares you down all the while like your very presence is an insult. And then there's the grades thing. She's my _younger_ sister, but don't tell her that. Insisted on seeing my grades like a hawkish parent. An _angry_ hawkish parent. Dictated my allowance. Gave me a curfew. Let's _not_ even go into trying to bring a girl over."

Clear processing failure. Rin, who had spent over half her life feeling guilty and frustrated at the loss of a sister had no concept of someone who could speak with such great annoyance for what she had secretly longed for. Perhaps not in the _same_ circumstances—Rin could not exactly imagine Sakura doting on her like a parent. Close enough, however. "Tried bringing your princess over to the house of a princess, huh?"

"No way." He put his head in his hands like the very thought caused him pain. "Arc did sneak around though, or try to. Arc liked Akiha. I don't think it ran the other way."

"Why do you say that?"

He looked up at her. Again, without being able to see his eyes, she still managed to discern the horror he held there. "Let's not go there. Trying to consider what is going on in Akiha's head is like navigating a minefield. While being shot at. During a lightning storm. While wearing medieval armor. In a—"

Rin clicked her tongue. "I get it, thanks."

"—with rabid dogs chasing you, and a swarm of bees stinging you—"

"And you jumped to shield her from harm…why?"

He "looked" at her strangely, the way his lips turned not a clear expression of amusement, confusion, anger, or sadness. A mix of them all, ultimately. "You have family?"

"Yeah."

"Don't tell me you get along with them perfectly and that everything they do doesn't tick you off like they were born to make your life hell."

"I get along with them pretty well and most of what they do doesn't tick me off like they were born to make my life hell." Extreme circumstances notwithstanding.

"You're a freak."

She understood, of course, the unspoken reason. Even if she would never have the same number of complaints, or even consider voicing any real issue. Everything with her "family" was silly, something Rin never regarded with anything but actual contentment.

But it was a strange chance to see something like it from the outside—_because_ she understood.

Throwing away everything because you cared.

"I know we've gone over this before, calling magi monsters and all. But in all honestly, it just sounds like your sister is weird, not that everyone else's family is the oddity."

Shiki looked stumped.

"What?"

"If I say, 'well you just need to experience her for yourself,' then my world ends. I don't wish for the terror the two of you could bring to this existence. You're actually a lot alike."

Rin began mentally calculating the likelihood of shoving her entire shoe into his mouth.

"Complaints aside, it's not exactly her. I think a lot of family is just like that. You fight to show you care. Or something like that." Although he looked dubious as to whether he meant it or if he was just miming some cliché rhetoric. "I'm sure I annoy her just as much."

Rin gave a sage nod. "Of that I'm certain you're absolutely right."

* * *

Shiki had taken to fiddling with the chain links hanging from his wrists, counting them off almost like a monk might go over a rosary. Though Rin had considered bringing some kind of entertainment in for him, she was at a loss since he could not read a book or the like. When she had brought up whether he could read Braille, he said he could not.

"I haven't actually been like this for a long time. A year at most. And I gotta be honest with you, I'm too lazy to learn something new now that I don't have to go to school."

"Not hard to believe," she had said.

Rin had done what she could, bringing a music player she rarely used and bought some music to go with it. Though she did not go far out of her way, the meals she brought attempted some variety, if nothing else than to make _her_ feel less like a prison warden.

Despite that, it was clear he had very little to do, nothing else to consider but his own thoughts and feelings.

"You people sure are an inconsistent bunch," he said. "You catch a guy for what he has, then apparently take weeks trying to figure out what to do next."

"I could stab you right now and then you'd have some excitement." Rin was once again at work on her project, staring down the items on the desk as if she could will them to work faster.

He dropped the chain he was counting, then leaned himself over the chaise sideways, his head hanging over the edge until he was facing her upside-down. "I'd take it over dying of boredom."

She watched him out of the corner of her eye. "That sounded serious." As joking as the words themselves sounded and as silly as he looked saying them while halfway falling off a lounge chair, he had that strange tone again.

"I'm mostly serious. I mean, I'd rather not die at all, but at this rate, the suspense is killing me."

The second part at least sounded more lighthearted, even if it was probably due to the double-meaning. "You have some kind of idea that you want to die at the hands of someone you know a little, rather than somebody else here?"

"I guess so."

Rin finished drawing blood from her arm and set the syringes down. "I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or bad thing. I mean, well, dying when you don't have to is stupid overall, but I'm talking relatively here."

He grinned.

"The Tohnos…or the Nanayas, are they some kind of Samurai clan? Do you have some dream of dying romantically in honorable battle or with one of your own hovering with a sword over your head as you stick yourself?"

"No. Nothing like that. I don't really think death of any kind is romantic or pretty, or even terrible and horrid. It just is." He considered his words carefully, sitting back up on the seat properly. "It is true that I'm not afraid to die," Shiki said.

There were many things Rin wanted to say. That it was not natural. That he should be. That he still had family and friends waiting for him. That he still might have a chance to find the one he lost. That he was an idiot for thinking so. But the simple way he said it, without any kind of emotion or deeper thought—just, making an observation—it diffused all her desire to argue the point. "I see."

The corner of his lips curled up at that, just briefly. But when it left his expression, he suddenly looked nervous.

"What?"

He made a humming noise in the back of his throat. "I'm not afraid to die," he repeated. "But," he looked reluctant, the tension in his posture somehow deflating enough that he appeared smaller, "I think I am afraid to die alone."

Rin fought off the sudden memory of staring up at her sister, still bathed in darkness but crying her eyes out. She fought it off with her own sarcastic shot. "That is the worst pick-up line ever, you know. I'm assuming that you think it'll work so well, in the next ten minutes my panties will be on the floor and we'll be doing it on this desk?"

The weird grin that met her statement was almost worth the embarrassing description. "Whoa, you have a dirty mind. I was just only imagining some cuddling on a couch in front of a sappy movie."

"You wouldn't be able to watch a movie."

"Ah…" he looked more embarrassed. "I guess I didn't think of that."

Once again, he immediately went for jokes and sarcasm. But Rin had seen where his thoughts had gone there, could make out the conclusion his mind had come to.

He did not want to say something like, _If I'm going to die, could you be there with me?_ As much as they might banter back and forth, she was still part of the system that might just take his life. So, instead, he hinted, _If I'm going to die, could you be the one to do it?_

Even though she understood it, could see it, could sympathize with it, Rin thought for just a moment that she might not have hated anyone so much as she hated him for the idea.

* * *

Rin left the grounds that evening, once more deciding to venture out to her apartment. The bitter cold that hit her when she left the building was countered by the sensation that her blood was boiling beneath her skin and she barely noticed the wind buffeting her coat and hair.

Only a block away, however, she took notice of a different kind of cold that crept up on her.

"Actually taking leave of your charge for once? A wise decision."

For Rin, Lorelei Barthomeloi evoked the word _severe_ in her mind. The way she stood, imperious and strict, and the intense look on her face always crossed Rin's senses first. The woman's hair was tied back and tight to her head in a no-nonsense way, and of course the riding crop she often carried gave her a kind of old-world feel. The woman was not exactly the kind to make Rin feel in danger, however, since she was one of the few that seemed not to care about the Heaven's Feel issue. Even so, as she approached the woman—who was heading in the opposite direction—a cold sense welled up in her, not unlike the first time she had met the dimension-hopping Wizard Marshal.

"I would advise you to discontinue your affiliation with that boy," Lorelei said.

Rin's eyebrows shot down. "Somebody has to 'affiliate' with him, regardless to what anyone wants with him specifically."

"You misunderstand." The woman tapped her crop in one hand. "_I cannot guarantee your safety_ if you continue to do so."

Rin felt her leg muscles tense, felt that fight-or-flight response in her mind start to kick in. "Threatening? Really?"

Lorelei looked insulted, the corners of her eyes tightening. "No. I threaten nobody. It is for your own safety, as I cannot guarantee what will happen." Lorelei continued on down the hall past her, but said over her shoulder, "The moment that one stepped in my way, I became one he was destined to fight. I would advise you _not_ be here when that happens."

* * *

She tossed and turned that night.

Unable to get the sense of foreboding out of her mind.

Unable to calm the anger she had over Shiki's choice of not-said words.

Unable to rid herself of the belief that she should do something.

* * *

"Something on your mind?" Shiki asked the following day. "You aren't your usual scathing self."

"Shut up," Rin said, though her thoughts were certainly elsewhere.

* * *

The sun was not due up for another hour, though London being London it probably would not come "out" to begin with. With the year nearing its end, Rin was actually surprised there had not been any snow yet.

Rin had returned once more to her apartment the evening before, this time taking her work with her. There, she had done what she could, until it was the early hours of the next day, when she packed right back up and headed for the tower grounds again. It was still so early, even for the never-asleep Association, that she encountered few along the way.

"Hey. Shiki. Get up."

She had gone straight for the lab, barged right in without knocking this time. Unsurprisingly, he was still asleep, still curled up in the sleeping bag she had provided for him.

He did not respond to her voice. Growling to herself, she gave him a little shake.

"Shiki, get up. Now."

Nothing. Sighing, she slapped his cheek once, then started poking at him. His only response was to bat at her hand like an irritating bug and roll his head aside as if to get away.

Rin glared. Like her, this guy was not a morning person. She was only awake now because she never managed to get to sleep in the first place.

Besides dousing him in water—which, with what she wanted to do, would cause an extra consideration she did not have time for—she knew of only one way that was sure-fire to wake anybody. So, blushing the entire while, she leaned forward until her face was right next to his, until her lips were brushing against his skin—

She blew the loudest, wettest raspberry she could manage right into his ear.

Shiki might as well have shot up into the ceiling at that, chains and all. He cleared his sleeping bag entirely and was instantly on his feet, head going this way and that, apparently trying to figure out what kind of violent alarm would make such a noise and for what purpose it was assailing him.

"The rhinos don't take sugar!" he shouted.

Rin stared at him. "I shudder to think of what goes on in your mind."

He clutched at his head like there was ringing in his ears—which there might be—and shook himself. As such, he did not react fast enough to catch the clothes Rin threw his way. "Wha?"

"Get changed."

"Ge…what?" Not only was he clearly still struggling with wakefulness, but he fumbled around as things were tossed into his face.

"Get changed. We're going out. You're going to treat me to something nice—I'll let you figure out what—and then you're going home." She reached over and ran prana into the key token that Bazett had left with her, a pseudo-Mystic Code that unlocked the cuffs around Shiki's wrists and ankles.

"Wh…out? What time is it?"

"Just hitting four-twenty in the morning. Hurry up." She moved back to the door, turning her back on him so he could do what he needed.

Not that he was. "I…what? I don't get it."

Rin stomped her foot hard onto the ground, spun on it, and hissed, "Get into those clothes _ right now_ or I'm dragging you buck-ass naked for all the world to see what a Japanese boy looks like shriveled up and freezing."

Apparently that was enough to focus his mind beyond the cobwebs of sleep straight into the horrors of the male anatomy. "I…yes…ma'am."

"When I talked about seeing a movie, I was only joking," Shiki whispered.

"Quiet."

They made their way out, Rin insisting they move fast and quiet—nobody would believe Shiki was a normal attendant at the tower with all the buzz about the "blind barbarian the departments all want to dissect." The early hour made it possible to weave through areas that were completely devoid of life, halls that echoed all-too loudly, toward a secondary stairwell that would take them in the direction of a side exit.

"Really. I don't, uh…don't want you to, uh, get…that professor of yours angry."

Despite the situation, Rin could not help but grin. Shiki was once more showing that very _male_ side of him and just not spitting out the concern he had of getting her involved. He would just have to learn that she could not help but involve herself.

Especially for someone who just wanted to be left to their own stupidity.

"Waver's always angry. I'd never be able to tell the difference." She sighed. "Just, shut up and keep up, alright? I don't want to hear it now. Complain to me after I get you out of here."

"I still don't get what you think you're gonna get done, here."

"Absolutely nothing but my own brand of stupidity, alright? Now, quie—"

The warning was too little, too late. They rounded a corner just in time to see a person step out of the doorway leading to the stairway Rin was hoping to use. Rin almost dove back the way they came, but stopped herself when she saw the man stride purposefully toward them.

"Che—already? I disabled the boundary field," Rin muttered to herself.

"But you didn't disable the listening device on the door," said the man that approached them. "Just a simple little thing, on the ceiling above it, that tells me when you've opened and closed it." The man stopped short of the hall's midway point. "And there's only two reasons you'd come so early. To have an affair, or to make a pathetic attempt at a breakout."

Rin took a few steps forward, cautiously, watching the speaker for the first sign of an attack. Shiki seemed to follow after, reluctantly—he was clearly confused about what was being said, foreign language and all. "Quite the voyeur, aren't you Gram?"

Gram was one of the magi that Rin had seen loitering outside of the room when Shiki was under examination. Though rather indistinctive as a person—hardly any taller than Shiki, faintly olive skin that suggested ancestry other than straight northwestern Europe—he was both ambitious and well-educated, coming from one of the departments Rin thought had the most vested interest in Shiki's dissection. He was also a physical danger, as his magecraft could easily be combat-manipulated.

"You ought to have known better," Gram said. "But I guess you Japs look after your own?"

Rin laughed. In Japanese, she said, "He said we _look_ after one another."

"I think he's…blind," Shiki said.

"Not to mention stupid."

Rin counted on that effect: the effect of people speaking a non-native language in front of somebody. The effect when that person knew they were talking about him. The effect when that person knew what they were saying was scathing to the one who did not understand.

Gram did look irritated. Irritated enough that the time for talk was apparently done for, and he thrust out his hand.

Rin pushed at Shiki, simultaneously pushing him to one side while giving her a springboard to move in the opposite direction. A harsh gust of wind passed between them from that, sudden and violent, but localized.

Gram had an alignment of wind. His usual application of it was something akin to telekinesis. He was often used to handle dangerous materials as he could manipulate objects from afar, transferring his physical actions to a location out of his reach.

Meaning he could punch and kick them from afar.

Rin had that covered. She made for one of the lounge couches that lined the wall, pulling it out and tipping it onto its back. She hid herself behind the upturned furniture and funneled her magic into it, Reinforcing it to the point where she doubted anyone less adept than her with magic could even scratch it. Though she was certain Gram had Reinforced his own blows or could manipulate his air strikes to be more powerful, she was certain he could not break through her cover.

Shiki, for his part, seemed to catch on quick. Though Gram sent a few experimental strikes his way, the marked man wove past them as if he could see them coming, moving strangely the entire time. Though it was not Capoeira, it reminded her of that style's unorthodox movement as Shiki's stance went wide and his body went low, almost like a four-legged animal.

Gram made a quick noise, some words in a language Rin did not know. She braced herself—

A strike hit her from the direction she and Shiki had come from. The standard method of thinking would be that Gram's strikes would come like he were reaching out across the expanse that separated him and striking, meaning that his blows could only come from the direction Rin had shielded herself. It was not so—and Rin had already thought of it.

The blow caught her as she raised her arms to guard, a snap of wind with the force of an American football linesman crashing into her headlong. At the same time, she kicked herself from the floor so the force of both her legs and the blow thrust her back into the couch, the couch forward down the hall. The moment the momentum was no longer at its apex, she pushed up from the ground, vaulted over the furniture, and crossed the hall toward Gram. As she did, Shiki also surged ahead, the man outpacing her and making for Gram first.

Gram made a crossed motion with both arms. If he had swords in them, the action might have resembled what Rin had once seen Archer do in battle.

The blow flung her way hit her aside the shoulder, though the direction she was running allowed her to twist her body, perform a spin, and still not loose her ground. She watched as what must have been an identical blow went Shiki's way, but he had already taken a hard turn almost straight for the wall.

If Rin had a way to describe it, the image that came to mind was a tennis ball thrown down the hallway. Gravity only appeared to matter after expending a vast amount of momentum and rebounding multiple times at difficult-to-track angles. Shiki was suddenly leaping for the wall with his leg extended, but instead of using the extra push from it to jump back into the middle of the hall and execute a high kick like she expected, he was suddenly against the ceiling. Gram seemed just as surprised, having raised his arms to block a blow that never came.

Rin came in low at that, a strike aimed for the magus' kidneys, but before it connected she withdrew in a feint just as the Gram's knee came up to block that as well. This was simultaneous to Shiki's continued arc, which sent him low to the opposite wall he had jumped from, rebounding only a few centimeters above the baseboard. Instead of taking a half-step into a normal stance or stumbling at the short distance, he landed as if he were part arachnid and came up with a kick, twisting his body and curling his foot around like his leg was a scorpion's tail. It caught Gram to the mirror side of where Rin's feint would have landed. With a knee up and his body ready to block a nonexistent hit, Gram went flying harder than he should have, his face careening into the exact place Shiki had initially jumped.

"I think I pulled something," Shiki complained.

Rin raised a finger and shot Gram point-blank with her Fin Shot, the energy discharge both cursing him and knocking the wind out of him completely. "Stretch it out. We have to hurry now, someone had to have heard that." She pulled him toward the exit Gram had come in from. "You need to exercise more."

She could barely make the joke, though, still replaying in her mind's eye what she had just seen. There was no Reinforcement involved, no magecraft at all. Shiki had simply been like an oversized jumping spider or had acted like gravity were some afterthought he only had to partially obey. Ignoring the Servants, she had never seen such a thing without some kind of magic involved.

"Because I could easily go for a run while chained and kept inside a small room," Shiki said. "Are we going to have to do that again?"

"Proba—"

Gram once more interrupted her, the sound of foreign words once again echoing through the hall. Rin turned in time to see the magus—still curled up against the wall—lift something silver and pointed without touching it. She tried to get a warning off, but the spell was faster, making a whistle of air as it shot forward. The knife sailed across the expanse separating them, a faster throw than should be physically possible. The weapon made a perfect line for Shiki's lower back, dead center to his spine—

Too late in his stride to make a leap out of the way, Shiki fell to the floor in a strange position, like someone grabbed his ankles from behind while simultaneously something pushed him at the shoulders from ahead. The knife flew past his shoulder, missing by a hair's breadth, and he absently reached up to catch the weapon by the pommel between two fingers.

Rin said, "Get that—"

Shiki tossed the weapon back toward the owner. It fell to the floor short of hitting the magi.

There was a cacophonous _crack_, followed by the rush of gale-force winds. Rin pulled Shiki through the doorway and into the stairwell.

"It had a spell on it," Rin explained, though she wondered if Shiki had somehow anticipated that. "Best not to use things someone else has thrown at you around here."

"What?" Shiki asked, his voice louder than normal. He cupped a hand behind his ear.

She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him along in response.

* * *

"You're going to rob me of _everything_ by the time I'm out," Shiki said. Four flights up and through another hall brought them on the ground level, though still a ways from the intended exit. In that time, his hearing had cleared, though he looked doubly sour.

"Quiet, or I'll take something more precious than that," Rin growled.

"I…wait," he held out an arm. The hall they were in was long and had no doors, simply acting as an indoor connection between distinct areas of grounds. Rin knew they were chancing it by crossing the boundaries between departments, but the main exit would be the most problematic to leave through even with the early morning hours. "Something's ahead, around the next corner," he said as quietly as he could manage.

"What?"

"Smells like a lot of oil and lube."

Rin looked at him funny.

"I'm serious!"

"No, I kind of smell it too." There was something in the air that vaguely reminded her of Shirou's shed and all the mechanical parts he had there. "But it's really the only way we can go. The main exit is trapped for non-magi like you."

"Do you happen to have something like a knife on you?"

"I do, but let's not go there unless we have to."

Shiki sighed. "I'm going to die, and it isn't even five in the morning. This sucks."

Slower than before, they took toward the strange scent, trying to keep their footfalls from echoing down the marble floor. When they reached the junction where the hall made a T-shape, Rin peeked around the corner and had her answer.

Men in leather robes. A wall of people completely blocking the exit.

They spotted her immediately, but did not move from their positions. Rin grumbled and glanced around the other corner, saw an identical group of armored guards standing at the far end of that hall. Each of them wore outfits that looked like a mix between a robe and leather armor. Rin shook her head. "Well, I guess this exit is trapped too."

"There are people coming from behind us. Lots of them."

Some kind of signal. Rin sighed, stepped out into the open. "I guess you've caught us."

The knight-like people before her did not respond, standing to attention but not making a move. Rin eyed them for a moment as the sound of footsteps finally came to her awareness behind, the same oily scent rushing in with the air they brought. Rin clenched her fists.

The Canticle had them completely boxed in.

"Is this the medieval age or something?" Shiki was shaking his head. "What's with all the leather?"

"They're the Canticle Brigade. They're magi soldiers, all trained to kill Apostles. You sort of insulted their pride when you killed one of the Ancestors," Rin supplied.

"Geez, don't they know how to go to a bar and pick up a woman, get over it like normal people? And seriously, what's with the clothes?"

A voice from before them answered. "The robes are forms of a Mystic Code that act as both physical and interference protection. They are based on items some of the Ancestors have." Lorelei Barthomeloi stepped out before the rest, crop in hand.

Rin said, "Say anything about pretty women right now and get a face full of my foot," before Shiki could open his mouth.

"It is unfortunate that this happened," Lorelei said. "I would have preferred that Rin Tohsaka not get herself involved after the warning I gave her, but it seems that the barbaric practices of her nation have made her irredeemable."

"You set this up," Rin ground out through her teeth.

The woman looked affronted. "No. I warned you. This certainly would have transpired at a future date, but you have merely expedited the circumstances. He would be mine, and there is no force within the tower to stop me from my prey. Now, I regret your involvement, but as you are aiding a Seal Designated prisoner in escape, you would be punished regardless." She allowed for a contemplative look. "I am surprised, however, at the timing. I thought that either you would do something immediately after my warning, or not do anything at all. Not take nearly two days." She considered for a moment longer, then shrugged. "It does not matter. This one has been under close observation the entire time. His escape is a simple impossibility."

Rin spat out a noise of contempt. "This sure seems prideful. Get your underlings to keep us boxed in."

"I did not call upon them to do so," Lorelei admitted. "I dislike such blatant shows of power. But my vice-commander is stubborn and did this of his own accord. They refuse to let me face battle alone, despite my obvious capacity." She frowned deeper, her natural frowning expression, only _more_. "I made them promise not to lift a finger, however."

"Yeah, that's comforting," Rin said.

Shiki's head went back and forth as if seeing some invisible game of tennis between the two women.

Until his "gaze" settled on Lorelei at the last. The woman's own glare burned hot enough to feel beneath his shroud.

"Shiki Tohno," Lorelei said, "your life ends here."

* * *

To be concluded.


	5. Chapter 5

Happy Valentines Day!

Thanks to I3uster on the BL forums for helping make the Gelman slightly less bad. And thanks to Google Earth for being Google Earth.

* * *

What I See

Chapter 5: To Stare at Death

* * *

Lorelei Barthomeloi stopped her slow advance on the duo, just outside of what she must have read as striking distance.

Rin spared a glance at her wristwatch, trying her best not to grind her teeth. The scraping noise in the back of her ears told her she failed. Shiki appeared to wait impassively, though the trained eye could make out how his legs had just enough tension to make a spring for an opening or a retreat.

"So, uh," Shiki held up a hand like he could stop the rising tide against him, "What did I do here?"

"That Dead Apostle you killed a while back, Louvre," Rin said through clenched teeth. "That was Barthomeloi's target."

"Un?" The sound Shiki made was the kind of sound one made when they were unsure what exactly they were reacting with, whether surprise or confusion or fear or frustration or any combination thereof. "Then, shouldn't it be good? I mean, that Louvre and them were taken out."

Rin glanced around the hall, back the way they had come from, then again past Lorelei's shoulder, before checking her watch again. "You ever get passed the ball during a game of soccer, and you've never scored a point, but you have the opportunity, and then the team ace takes the ball from you anyway and scores instead? Something like that."

"I'm a team ace? I've never been a team ace. I watched from the sidelines."

Rin started to growl out a response, but Lorelei cut in. "If you are done conferring amongst yourselves, perhaps you would like a weapon, now? I would hate to destroy you when you are unarmed, Shiki Tohno."

Shiki fiddled with the top edge of his eye covering, scratching just beneath the lip of the material. "If you don't want to kill the unarmed person, I think I'm good."

"Would you prefer torture?"

The smirk on Shiki's face fell and he looked visibly deflated. "Well, that doesn't exactly thrill me, I'm not really into that kind of thing, but if the only other option is death, torture is less bad."

The woman snapped her riding crop into her hand hard enough to make the associated whipping noise. "You perceive it as if I would harm your body. But you misunderstand. I would have you punished for the pain you have caused me. Punished in the same way." She pointed the crop toward him like she might a stubborn animal. "You trampled upon my pride. Perhaps you would like the same in return? I am aware that you came willingly so your sister would not come to harm. What if that were to change? Perhaps she too could be brought here, examined, lest we forget how you came by those eyes—"

Shiki's mouth snapped shut, his irreverent expression replaced with something else. His jaw and cheekbones set, while his nostrils flared, matching the sudden rise and fall of his shoulders.

None of which Rin was happy to see. She glanced one final time at her wristwatch, then scowled. "Oh, forget this. Looks like we're on our own." With a sigh of suffering, she reached behind her back, pulled at her blouse, and withdrew a rough, silvery device from beneath the waistband of her skirt.

Even Lorelei Barthomeloi's eyes went wide. "Tohs—"

"_Es lässt frei. Juwelenschwert des Kaleidoskops!_"

Prismatic light.

The magnitude was far less than before. It was downscaled, hastily tinkered with, removed from its original design. It was not the light that vanquished giant shadows created with the energy of the Holy Grail. Even if the air in this place had been as full of mana as the caverns beneath Enzou—and this hall was most certainly not as rich—it would still have fallen far short of the effectiveness she once experienced. The force was closer to small arms fire rather than a tank shell.

But the light from Rin Tohsaka's Jewel Sword still had enough kick to do what she needed.

The arc she made in the air created a wave of light that spanned the entire width of the hall. It struck where floor met wall and cut a perfect line right before the feet of the Canticle members, blowing wood and marble and concrete up into the air. The tide of smoke that issued forth shot down the hall like a backdraft of fire and everyone but Shiki was forced to close their eyes from the debris that assaulted their faces. Lorelei was caught right in the center of the blast, but she had some kind of spell up, her glove glowing with the same light from Rin's attack.

With her free hand, Rin grabbed Shiki by the wrist and pulled him laterally.

"_Es lässt frei. Schnellsalve!_"

Another surge of light shot forth. It crashed into the wall and beyond, blasting a hole out into the open air.

That was all it took. In scaling the blade down to be a complete product in time to be of use, Rin knew it only had one, maybe two uses in it. The sub-par materials she had to craft it with collapsed under the weight of the power she was channeling much as her muscles had collapsed when using the real thing. The crystalline structure of the sword crumbled to dust as if harvested by a completely inept gemcutter.

Still, it would do. Rin pulled on Shiki's hand and guided him through the rubble, holding her breath until they were clear of the smoke cloud.

Dull, pale light. The sun would normally be a short while from cracking the horizon and painting the sky in pale radiance, but the ever-dour London weather cloaked that. Streetlamps still lit much of the exterior, and only just. Rin was however thankful. The only other thing she had going for her was that no civilians would have seen what just happened directly—the hall had been on the museum grounds and the area they were traveling through led onto a back road that was often empty of traffic even in the middle of the day.

"This way," she said, pulling Shiki down the street.

"What the hell was that?" he hissed. "Did you hide a rocket launcher under that skirt?"

"Shut up and run!"

* * *

Smoke billowed through the hall. The dirt and grit that had started to settle from Rin's first strike flew up again at the second as the pressure change pulled air to and fro, some of the cloud attempting to escape out the new exit that appeared.

Though Lorelei barked out a command to halt, the Canticle pushed through the rubble in pursuit of their quarry, some of them coughing, others cursing their footing. The brigade had its pride as magi as well, and despite their commander's words, they wished to punish the ones responsible for this blunder. "We will not let you escape!" some rallied. Others began the process of spellwork, their arias humming through the din of people.

"That is not your purpose!" Lorelei called out, but many were already filing out.

Beyond, the street was empty. That was to be expected. Two of the Canticle crouched down, spells were spoken, and the revelation of footprints came to be like fingerprints appeared beneath forensic dust. The magus that had the right direction motioned to his fellows, stood, and—

Halted in place.

Brigade members glanced to each other in confusion, then to the one that had picked up the trail. "What is it?" they asked.

Another man froze in mid-stride, as a child might in the game of Statues. Unable to halt his momentum, he toppled over onto the concrete face-first. The noise he made was slapstick enough to make the others wince.

By the third frozen person, the first was struggling to look down. His body was not simply frozen in place as if hit by some form of curse. From just above his waist spread out a darkness that rolled over the rest of his body. The darkness at the source stilled, hardened, settled, until it took on the appearance of a slate-colored substance. Like stone.

The man tried to cry out, but found that it was difficult to even take a breath. He heard ringing in his own ears from the rush to his head, the lack of oxygen. The only thing he could make out beyond was the same sounds of horror from the others he wanted to make, the muted cries of people unable to move, unable to stop the surge of magic passing over them, through them.

Jeweled eyes watched the brigade from the eaves of an alleyway, until the entire party had other things to worry about than pursuit of two youngsters.

* * *

Other magi gathered where the corridor had been blasted open, roused from their work or slumber by the explosions. Some were already in the process of repairing the damaged building. More were carrying unconscious brigade members in, men and women that were partially petrified. One was even being examined by his fellow, the examinee unable to do anything but glare while the other poked and prodded.

"What a mess."

Waver Velvet meandered in, disinterest in his eyes despite the comment. A form resembling a woman molded out of silver trailed in his wake, then presented a broom when they reached the edge of the ruble pile. It began sweeping.

Lorelei Barthomeloi was chewing on her thumb. She did not acknowledge the Lord of El-Melloi but for a slight flicker of her eyes.

"Obliterate them so thoroughly?" Waver asked.

"No," Lorelei growled.

Waver was either truly surprised, or had the gall to look it. "They got away?"

"No. Others were alert to the escape attempt. Not mine. Probably some of the hunters." The Canticle leader seemed as disinterested in conversing with him as he did with her, despite her explanation.

Waver watched his "maid" help shift the ruble pile, allowing more magi to move in and regenerate the wall. Damaged materials slowly disappeared as the building was repaired. "Not going after them?"

Finally Lorelei glared at him directly. "She used the Second."

Again, Waver looked—or faked—surprise. "Huh." He shrugged. "Isn't that what everyone kept asking for?" The response was his answer, however. Lorelei Barthomeloi would not, despite her power and prestige, dare to intervene in such a matter. Even ignoring the issue others in the tower might have if she destroyed an heir to the Second, the fact remained that her calculations of her enemy's capacity were off. Far off.

A leader did not run into battle blindly.

Waver turned to go.

Lorelei asked, despite herself, "Unconcerned for your apprentice?"

"Feh." The man put his hands in his robe pockets, cast one last look at the damage, then was on his way. "Forget her. I have work to do."

After all, _Suikoden_ would not get done on its own.

* * *

They headed in the direction of Regent's College, the large park next to it a place to hide out and regroup. It was also far enough away to not be an immediate location for the Association to start looking—

And for Shiki to be out of breath before they were even halfway.

"Work out more," Rin said.

"I've been stuck inside for days, weeks! And you've been feeding me junk food!"

Rin let him huff and puff, reminding herself that this was actually a dying man. His annoying habits concealed that simply too-well. She glanced to her watch again. Irritated, she fumbled around her jacket pocket for something else. The mobile phone she pulled out was not an advanced kind at all and had the basic, cheap appearance of a disposable. "C'mon."

"You expect it to talk back?" Shiki asked, his breath still fast.

"No, I expect a call. Ugh."

They had crossed through a smaller park along the way, empty at such an early hour. At least, it should have been empty. But one person sat on a bench along the path Rin had chosen, blond hair and dark clothes contrasting in the otherwise green backdrop and grey light.

Jane was one of the Enforcers that had captured Shiki initially. He was one Rin was familiar with somewhat, as she tried to avoid him like the plague: the intense way he stared at her was unnerving, creepy even.

He did not move from his spot on the park bench, though. Nor did he even bother to remove a cigarette from his mouth when he spoke. "Fraga is back in town, so you know."

Rin stared. "What's your game? Stalling until people get here?"

"Just warning you." He blew smoke out from the side of his mouth not occupied with the cigarette. "She had a trace put on him," he motioned to Shiki, "probably one of her runes. She'll know where you go. The others are out here somewhere too. One of them has guns and hasn't been able to shoot something in a while."

Keeping her eyes on the Enforcer at all times and keeping herself between the man and Shiki, she moved them from one side to the other like one might avoid a dangerous animal. "And you?"

Jane scratched at stubble marring his chin, but his eyes remained on Rin as well. Though nothing in his gaze seemed to change, his voice lowered somewhat. "I'm on a smoke break."

* * *

They kept running, through the park where Jane had been, up some alleyways and down some side streets, long enough that real morning light was evident even despite the cloud cover. More people were starting to make appearances, though still few enough that Rin did not want to drop her guard at all.

"What was…that about?" Shiki asked, still winded as they moved.

"I'm…not sure." Rin felt one sense of tension dissolve from her as they crossed the last street and made it to the larger Regent's College area, a place big enough to truly get lost in. The trees and bushes were thick enough that even after only just stepping foot into the place, she was certain the noise from nearby streets would be muted or gone altogether. "I think he might've been trying to help."

Shiki seemed relieved that they were letting up on the pace somewhat. "Then you should thank him someday. I'm sure he'd accept dinner and a movie from a pretty girl like you."

"I keep telling you—"

"And I keep telling _you_, it's a guy thing. We _know_."

There was a faint sound, like the snapping of a ruler against a desk truncated so no echoing occurred. It came in bursts timed perfectly with small explosions in the grass near Rin's feet.

"Shooter!" Shiki tried to motion to a cluster of trees, but was yanked in another direction.

Rin pulled him as fast as she could. The clearing they were in offered absolutely no protection for a good twenty meters. Bullets followed in her wake as their aim was adjusted. No matter how fast she ran, she could not beat the path they took to the cover of more foliage—

The storm of bullets halted. No, it was not that they stopped, but their progress suddenly fell off into nothingness. Bullets still whizzed through the air and the faint cracking noise continued, but—

* * *

If one had their ears beyond superhuman sensory level, the sound of the bullets passing through the air halted a meter or so before Rin and Shiki, as if the faint noise they made caved in on itself like a space devoid of air.

If one had their eyes beyond superhuman sensory level, the sight of the bullets bent inward upon themselves about a meter or so before Rin and Shiki, as if the light carrying their vision was pulled into a black hole.

* * *

Caleg, the Enforcer that had been shooting, cursed. From his perch atop a branch big enough to support his generous frame, the man made to reload his weapon, an L85 assault rifle in use by the British military, a suppressor over the barrel. He did not understand what had happened to his shots as his aim should have been true. Tohsaka had not activated any kind of magecraft besides the Reinforcement of the body, so he was confounded by the defense that had appeared in front of her—

When Caleg lifted his weapon to jam in the new magazine, something hit the weapon from below. The force was great enough that the Enforcer had to steady himself on his perch; he pulled out a sidearm to address his new attacker, instinct and experience allowing him to fire before he had even consciously identified their location.

The attacker hunkered down behind a barrier—a boundary field at first glance. Unlike most others, this field had a visible presence, a faint red starburst of light. His bullets rebounded from the shield without any effect.

Caleg spared a glance at the L85. It was skewered by what impossibly looked to his eye like a claymore-sized sword.

When he glanced back to his attacker, he saw three identical blades flying his way. These, he understood and recognized—recognized too well, his mind warning him of incoming unpleasantness.

Black Keys struck him, and his confusion became a lesser concern.

* * *

They grouped up under the cover of a different cluster of trees, ones with a couple of animals actually chirping away despite the cold—a good sign that they were in fact alone. While Shiki regained his breath, he tried to catch on to who they were, the two people that had come to meet them. One was most certainly male and around his height, maybe a bit taller, while the other was female and slightly shorter than Rin. The familiar way Rin addressed them, however, was a sign of their allegiances.

"What went wrong?!" Rin hissed. "You were supposed to call when you were in position at the exit!"

Sakura Matou managed to somehow look annoyed and amused at the exact same time. Shirou Emiya did not—he merely scowled. "You didn't give us any directions," Shirou said.

"I told you the British Museum!"

"Um," Sakura smiled, nervously glancing about. "We don't live here, remember?"

"I can't even read the signs," Shirou complained.

"And finding transportation from the hotel at this hour was a little more difficult than usual."

"Plus the stingy amount you gave us couldn't tip the cab driver."

"Didn't know what you would be wearing."

"The visibility around here is terrible—"

At this point, Rin was clawing at the space above her shoulders like she could rip their words right out of the air, keeping them from reaching her ears. "_Okay!_ _I get it!_"

"Converting weight measurements from stones to kilograms."

"My stomach will cave in from the food here."

If it was clear to Rin that they were now just giving her grief, she made no sign of it.

"Your…family, I take it?" Shiki asked.

Rin growled. "Nobody else in the world can make me so ticked off, yes."

"I'm Shirou," the male introduced himself. "This is Sakura, Tohsaka's—"

"Sister. Yeah, I think I can tell."

All three of them looked momentarily baffled.

"She smells like Rin."

Though Shiki could not see it, Sakura blushed brightly enough she might have been blooming. Rin blushed as well, though she was clearly less surprised by the odd observation. Shirou just remained baffled. "Are you part bloodhound or something?"

"Well, I can also tell that last night the two of you must have been going at it—"

"Alright! We need to get clear of this mess," Rin shouted, louder than necessary, warding off further commentary. Also sparing her any graphic details Shiki's mind could conjure up of her sister's love life. "So you came to the other place I mentioned."

Shirou nodded. "Big park is easier to find from a high vantage point. I don't know what the British Museum even looks like. Anyway, Rider went out then in spirit form to try and find it, since she can move a lot faster."

"Where is she now?"

"Just arrived here now," a voice from nowhere said. She materialized before them, a phantom ghost with long, flowing hair. "Magi are now leaving the grounds in search of you."

While the others nodded, Shiki nearly fell back from shock. "Where'd you come from?!"

The woman, wherever she had come from, apparently decided it was unimportant to explain. "Different from the ones that were chasing you before."

Rin sighed. "That'd be the lackeys from the departments that want this one's head." She jerked her thumb in Shiki's direction. "Probably trying to impress upon their leaders' good graces."

"Back to the original plan?" Shirou asked. "Distract and dissuade them until they give it up?"

"If you must." Rin did not sound happy. "But if you see a woman, reddish hair, about this tall, in a suit? Run like hell. Even you, Rider."

It might have seemed strange, in hindsight, to tell a Heroic Spirit something of the sort. Rider smiled, though. "I will be careful," she said, taking the remark as intended.

"We'll head now in the other direction," Rin explained. "Toward the river, in case you were still _lost_." She scowled at Shirou, who grinned and held up his hands in surrender. "Give me a call when they start to turn in, or if things get hairy."

The three nodded.

"Um," Shiki raised his hand. "Do any of you have something I can use? Even a pocket knife would be fine."

"This may sound…like a silly question," Sakura said, "but how can you use, um, _anything_?"

Rin was the one to answer. "Just let him have something, I'm sure he can give you a nice, long-winded answer some other time." She seemed to address Shirou instead, though.

The redhead smiled.

* * *

"When I said that magi aren't fair when they don't risk their own families, I didn't mean for you to do this," Shiki said. "You shouldn't have brought them here."

"I'm just full of screw-ups today," Rin muttered.

"I'm serious."

They took a path that gave the areas they had just been in a wide berth. If the Regent's Park was to the north of the British Museum, they made a crescent path from there to the southwest, keeping roughly the same distance from the museum, circling it like a compass. They stuck to back alleys and lightly traveled streets, though it was getting harder and harder to avoid eyes on them as the early morning gave way to daytime in earnest. Rin made as if she were guiding her blind companion, lightly holding his arm and guiding.

"It's not like I did it just because of that," Rin said. "It…well, it was related a bit to what you said, though." She shook her head. "Obliquely."

"Oh good, a straight answer."

She smacked his arm. "_I'm_ serious. Or trying to be."

"Hrm."

A police car went by, siren on. Rin eyed it as it passed, hoping it was entirely unrelated to them. "I know what it's like, trying to protect your family. Sakura…she's my family. And there are things about her that if the Association knew, it would cause trouble. More trouble than even this."

He turned his head her way, as if to give her a disapproving look. "Yet you called her here."

"You ever think that maybe, just maybe, your sister might have found a way to handle the people sent for you?"

"Nope. As much as Akiha is scary, that Bazett is scarier."

Rin sighed, long and deep, regretfully. Regretful of what she clearly did not want to say. "Even so, you might have just put your faith in her anyway."

Shiki did not exactly frown, though his lips made a strange pursed expression.

"I think, if I'm going to screw up," Rin glanced back over her shoulder in the general direction of where they had parted from her family, "I might as well do it around them." She snorted. "Though even at that…they might surprise you and turn the tables."

Because, as much as Rin hated to admit it, she would never be able to protect them entirely on her own. She should have known that by now—all things considered. If it took a Heroic Spirit, a homunculus girl from a rival family, and an idiot boy with an impossible magic all just to make the chance to save her sister, Rin knew she would need just as much to save this stranger next to her.

"Oh damn," Shiki said, his breath escaping with a gasp.

It was not even a back alley. They would not have thought it initially to be a good place for an attack. They were still next to a one-way street. The block they were on was dominated by a large church. Nobody else passed by. Bicycle racks were empty nearby.

Bazett Fraga McRemitz came up toward them. She gave no warning. No sign. The charge came and was faster than even Rin could manage on Reinforced legs.

It was her job, after all. Even if Bazett set it up for Rin to care for Shiki, even come to the compassion of attempting a breakout, Rin knew this would have come eventually.

She did not know that her rescuee would be the rescuer.

The miss was of the just-barely type. Shiki gave Rin a hard shove with one hand and Bazett's punch flew through the space created between them. Shiki's other hand came up with the Azoth sword Shirou had made for him, the cut aiming for Bazett's opposite shoulder. The Magus Killer was already twisting out of the way, spinning around, the same arm Shiki would have cut coming up. The back of her fist collided with Rin's raised arms, sending the younger girl flying.

Shiki continued his own motion, his shoulders going down and his leg curling up behind him with the same scorpion-tailed kick that he had performed before. It caught Bazett just above her left kidney, but the noise Shiki's foot made was akin to hitting a metal bulkhead rather than a body.

Bazett continued her spin, brought her right fist back down to strike Shiki right between the shoulder blades. However, Shiki sprung himself up to a one-armed handstand from his ineffective kick and Bazett's blow hit the pavement instead as the young man contorted himself oddly and flung himself in the opposite direction of where Bazett had struck Rin. He skidded to a stop a good handful of meters back, flipped the dagger around in his hand, turned his head in Rin's direction.

Rin was clutching her arm—it was most definitely broken—but was on her feet, watching with wide, shaking eyes.

Bazett moved after him, once again faster than a mere human should.

Shiki raised the alchemist sword and cut through the cloth over his eyes.

* * *

It was not the sheer inhuman power and speed of the Servants, but it was the kind of fight that Rin knew she would never bear witness to again in her lifetime.

The unnatural glow of runes to Bazett's clothes. The unnatural glow of strange light to Shiki's eyes.

Bazett moved like a speeding train, charging with hands and knees set to maim or kill. Her blows would punch holes right through mortal men.

Shiki moved like a cheetah, crouched nearly on all fours and dashing faster than he ought to. His slashes drew lines in the air like razor wire.

Bazett would miss just barely, the pure muscle of her strikes actually tearing the coat Rin had given Shiki right off. One punch missed his face, grazed his cheek, tore his skin by utter force.

Shiki would miss just barely, the precision of his cuts making neat little slices into Bazett's blazer. The intense glare he gave her suggested he was not happy with the results.

At their fifth—or was it sixth?—pass at each other, Shiki barely dove out of the way as Bazett stomped her foot down on where his head just was. The impact punched a crater into the pavement, white dust kicking up into the air. Bazett turned on her heel and was after Shiki, suddenly moving faster, _faster_, their shared destination to an undamaged part of the sidewalk, Bazett so much faster that she would reach it before Shiki, who stared his dash sooner.

Shiki seemed to disappear.

Bazett's punch toward the ground this time did not crater it—instead a flash of fire shot out from her glove like a shockwave. Rin could vaguely see an F-shaped rune glowing at Bazett's wrist.

Back in the direction of the crushed sidewalk, back to the other side of it, Shiki reappeared, his eyes wide, vibrating in an inhuman manner. He crouched low for another pounce.

Wasting no time, Bazett was charging again, once more even _faster_, her feet a blur. Instead of a direct line to strike, she came up with a roundhouse kick—

Shiki swung his weapon through the pavement at his feet.

The pavement beneath Bazett's planted foot gave way, coughing up shards of concrete. Her kick went off-balance. Shiki flipped the Azoth sword in his hand, made a thrust toward the Enforcer, then dove clear. Bazett's recovery was immediate, as she nearly drove her foot into his body anyway.

Bazett turned in place. The glove on her right hand fell away.

Before she could respond with another attack, the dagger Shiki was using flew toward her. She raised her other hand, batted it away—and that glove fell apart.

Above her, inverted, Shiki thrust a hand down. Between his thumb and first two fingers, a piece of concrete shaped like a narrow guitar pick.

"_Kyokushi—_"

Rin was running the moment she saw the flying dagger. She dove for where Bazett knocked it aside, rolled over the weapon, came up with it in hand. Rin dug it into the earth as deep as she could and smacked the pommel with her palm.

"_Lässt!_"

The jewel within released its prana. The entire sidewalk rumbled, then exploded. Like the tower grounds had from the Jewel Sword, the street was engulfed in a wave of dust and dirt.

Rin dove through it all to where she estimated Shiki to have landed and managed to find him by nearly tripping over him. She hauled him up by his collar and half-shoved, half-ran him to the other end of the street. Despite the fact that she knew they now needed to run as fast as they could, Rin could not help but glance over her shoulder for pursuit.

Bazett cleared the dust cloud perpendicular to their escape, nearer to the building wall opposite of the church. She watched them flee but did not give chase, both her hands empty and clutching at her own shoulders, her blazer gone.

"What did you do?!" Shiki coughed through the smoke in his lungs.

"What did _you_ do?!" Rin returned. "I just made your knife explode. That's what it was meant to do in the first place!"

He coughed again. "Ugh."

They crossed another street, made it around a corner. Some pedestrians were looking at them oddly, but others were heading in the direction of all of the noise and excitement.

"Well?"

Shiki coughed a third time, then made a noise like his mouth was dry and he was in desperate need of water. "I just…killed…her motivation."

Rin, puzzled at his phrasing, glanced back. They could not see the place of the fight, of course, but it made visualizing easier to her.

Bazett, gloveless—she understood that he was removing her rune-enhanced weapons. She had lost her blazer too, and Rin thought they might have had some kind of armoring enhancement on them.

But—clutching her own body?

"It sure is cold, isn't it?" Shiki said. "I just lost my coat, you know."

"No, you can't use m—oh no." Rin's eyes went wide.

It…did he?

She gave Shiki an evaluating look. He was not smiling, though his tone had been light enough. It seemed that despite his little joke, he was still unhappy. "I thought you would have killed her."

He blinked, looking up at the sky. With the shroud gone, his eyes did seem otherworldly, even more than Rider's despite their normal shape. The blue light in them almost had an aura that extended beyond their physical boundaries, hovered just outside, a colored steam. "One good turn deserves another, don't you think?"

Rin wondered at that. The world…she knew it did not agree. In fact, that was her next concern—Waver Velvet's explanation of Shiki's Mystic Eyes and what they were doing to his brain flittered through her consciousness. "You lost your blindfold."

"It was starting to not work anyway," he admitted. "The lines were appearing in the darkness." He sighed. "Better to know what they're lines of."

That…was bad.

He finally turned his gaze onto her. They slowly moved over her, clearly trying to assimilate what he knew about the Rin Tohsaka he had in his mind's eye to the one that now stood before him. She expected him to make a joke, make a comment about how he was right or wrong about her appearance and the sixth sense males apparently shared on the matter—

"You're…very beautiful."

—but she was wrong.

"C'mon," she said. "Let's get clear of this mess."

* * *

By the time they had crossed the river to the south, it was long past afternoon. Shirou and Sakura had called her, let her know that the search was either stalled or called off. They were unsure as to why, though they passed on from Rider that things were going too public for the Association to move hastily. The fact that one of their Enforcers had been found unconscious and pinned to a tree by Church weapons, while another had apparently been involved in a road-destroying fight that called down a lot of attention probably had a lot to do with it.

It was likely that it was still somewhat dangerous for them to do this. After all, though in a public location, they were isolated from the eyes of a crowd—a wily magus could still reach them, whether by boundary field or long-ranged spell or familiar—but Rin had decided to risk it. With the revelation that Shiki's conceptual weapon was no longer working on his Mystic Eyes, she decided they should at least once before leaving.

He had brought it up before, after all.

* * *

The passenger car they had arranged was private. It was not a difficult sell to the operators, a couple wanting to take the London Eye trip alone together, still young enough to be impulsive and unable to think about getting tickets ahead of time. They boarded the giant Ferris wheel without issue, were given a clear sight of the city and the Thames from the giant capsule windows.

"Akiha is going to be real mad," Shiki said. "Not only did I skip out on her, I got to go on a famous foreign ride."

"I'll remember that you owe me three hundred British pounds." She decided to blame it all on frazzled nerves. No way in her right mind would she have spent so much on a mere thirty minute sightseeing ride.

"My sister is good for it…well," he seemed to reconsider, rubbing at his temples. "Er, she is. But now that I think about it, I might not want to owe _her_."

Rin snorted. "Your sister sure has you whipped into shape real good."

"Yeah." He settled down in place next to her, his eyelids somewhat lulled. The toll of his sight was clearly giving him a headache, though he had not complained. By midday, though, he was cringing from constant pain. "Can't wait to explain all the rest of it to her."

"Just," Rin stared out over the Thames, thinking of the river that parted her own hometown, "leave your sister to me. I'll talk her down." It was not even a concern for her anymore—she knew that this would end with her tripping back to Japan, returning Shiki to his family. From his descriptions of his sister's attitude, she had even resolved to put up with the inevitable accusation that this was out of some kind of reverse-Stockholm Syndrome love. "You should see me with Shirou's…older sister."

"I don't know," his voice was quieter than before. "I told you my sister makes it hell when I try to bring a girl over."

"Mm, Taiga didn't much care for me either," Rin said.

Shiki thought about the name he did not recognize, then his thoughts drew an obvious line to the people he met earlier. "So, your sister and that guy. Married? Engaged?"

"Permanently involved, though not legal yet." Rin leaned back on her hands. "Already sizing up more women, huh? I guess Rider is unattached."

Shiki's lips came up to touch hers.

It really was nothing more than a touch, shy of even a brush of fingertips or a whisper of breath to the skin. Rin could not even move back before he was away, the pale light in his eyes causing her to wonder if it were a mere illusion cast by some otherworld's fey. "Sorry, no man could resist." Despite the words matching his jokes before, his tone was still quiet, sincere.

She looked at him dumbly.

He let out a small laugh, retreated back into his own space, leaning back on his own hands, though his left and her right had come to be entwined. Rin could not recall when that had occurred. "And thanks."

Finally managing a scowl, Rin said, "For stealing a kiss?"

"Eh." He did not elaborate, seemed to settle down in his seat, leaning against her faintly since there was no back to their bench.

Rin let him. She reminded herself it was not a reverse-Stockholm Syndrome situation.

Instead of poking at his uncalled-for familiarity with her, she thought back to the various conversations they had, first to his sister and family, then to all the rest. She considered that he was simply thanking her in general, but everything he said always seemed to have that double-meaning, even if it was often a joke. She thought of the random-yet-justified complaints he had, the comments about food and entertainment, his horror over her need to regularly draw blood for her magecraft. She thought of his shiver-inducing words about killing everything he could and tearing the Clock Tower apart with his power, thought of his melancholy over the romance he had lost, thought of his strange-yet-not strange powers of perception. She thought of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and his inability to keep them straight.

Motion outside the capsule caught her eye. "Huh. Snow white. I mean, outside, not the fairytale."

Shiki was quiet.

"Okay, sleeping beauty?" She thought he might appreciate the joke, watched him for a response.

His eyes were still open, though only just; he _could_ have been asleep. She followed his gaze down to where their hands were joined.

She thought of the conversation they had before her decision to break him out. About fearing death.

It was starting to snow in earnest outside, lending the city a wintry feel that reminded her more of home. Rin let her head lull to Shiki's, her cheek settling into the fringes of his hair. There, she waited, wondering if the operators would allow her to take another circuit around the wheel.

* * *

End


End file.
